Compaq Evo boot problem

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 10:46:51AM -0400, Haidut wrote:
> This is a really embarassing bug for a modern operating system
> to have. Of all things, the bootloader should be the most stable. And
> the computer is not that old either. It's a P4 and both Linux and
> Windows work on it like charm.

You know how BIOS code is tested in today's world? See if Windows boots
and the BIOS is correct. If you have a good vendor, he also tries Linux.
Things like standard compliance are completely ignored by many vendors.
Just look how many BIOSes don't implement a correct PCI-BIOS with
correct interrupt routing table and you would be scared.

Compaq specifically has a history of doing nasty broken stuff and just
because the Forth VM is faulting doesn't mean that it is the fault of
the code. Heck, you can get kernel faults from a number of PCI-BIOS
implementations when you ask it to route an interrupt for you. God bless
ACPI.

Joerg