Is there OS support for integrating Intel motherboard SMBus widgets (LM81,
LM79, etc.) into your applications?
I can’t find any way to use these things unless you LICENSE the ACPI spec
from Intel. The motherboard chipset is not documented - only the driver
methods, and ACPI drivers are only available for Windows, as provided by
motherboard vendors. So am I to understand that I can buy a nice embedded
motherboard, but to use its self-monitoring capabilities, I have to run
WINDOWS on it? What the hell good is that?!
“James Dabbs” <jdabbs@tga.com> wrote in message
news:97lbji$j05$1@inn.qnx.com…
I can’t find any way to use these things unless you LICENSE the ACPI spec
from Intel. The motherboard chipset is not documented - only the driver
methods, and ACPI drivers are only available for Windows, as provided by
motherboard vendors. So am I to understand that I can buy a nice embedded
motherboard, but to use its self-monitoring capabilities, I have to run
WINDOWS on it? What the hell good is that?!
AFAIK the details of ACPI are not public domain and if you are interested in
writing drivers for them you will need to get a license from Intel to do
so, just like your MB manufacturer did. Once you had the proprietary info
you could then write your non-Win driver for it. ACPI is only one of a
variety of devices that you need a license agreement for to be able to get
the data you need to write a driver for, which is why “free” OS’s like linux
often lag years behind windows in what hardware they can support as the
license almost always prohibits releasing any source code or data on how the
device operates to non-licensees… 
There are several graphics chipsets which have the exact same problem, among
others…
Marisa