x86: doc: move x86-generic documentation from Doc/x86/i386

The boot protocol, USB legacy support, and zero-page documentation is
common to the x86 platform, not i386-specific.

Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>

1 files changed, 44 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/x86/usb-legacy-support.txt b/Documentation/x86/usb-legacy-support.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..1894cdfc69d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/x86/usb-legacy-support.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+USB Legacy support
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>, January 2004
+
+
+Also known as "USB Keyboard" or "USB Mouse support" in the BIOS Setup is a
+feature that allows one to use the USB mouse and keyboard as if they were
+their classic PS/2 counterparts.  This means one can use an USB keyboard to
+type in LILO for example.
+
+It has several drawbacks, though:
+
+1) On some machines, the emulated PS/2 mouse takes over even when no USB
+   mouse is present and a real PS/2 mouse is present.  In that case the extra
+   features (wheel, extra buttons, touchpad mode) of the real PS/2 mouse may
+   not be available.
+
+2) If CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is enabled, the PS/2 mouse emulation can cause
+   system crashes, because the SMM BIOS is not expecting to be in PAE mode.
+   The Intel E7505 is a typical machine where this happens.
+
+3) If AMD64 64-bit mode is enabled, again system crashes often happen,
+   because the SMM BIOS isn't expecting the CPU to be in 64-bit mode.  The
+   BIOS manufacturers only test with Windows, and Windows doesn't do 64-bit
+   yet.
+
+Solutions:
+
+Problem 1) can be solved by loading the USB drivers prior to loading the
+PS/2 mouse driver. Since the PS/2 mouse driver is in 2.6 compiled into
+the kernel unconditionally, this means the USB drivers need to be
+compiled-in, too.
+
+Problem 2) can currently only be solved by either disabling HIGHMEM64G
+in the kernel config or USB Legacy support in the BIOS. A BIOS update
+could help, but so far no such update exists.
+
+Problem 3) is usually fixed by a BIOS update. Check the board
+manufacturers web site. If an update is not available, disable USB
+Legacy support in the BIOS. If this alone doesn't help, try also adding
+idle=poll on the kernel command line. The BIOS may be entering the SMM
+on the HLT instruction as well.
+