Sid Karnik wrote:
>
> >
> > Speaking of other operating systems..... I have the tools for compiling NT
> > drivers if we have someone to code them ;-)
> > Nick
>
> since i write drivers for a living.. this shouldn't be a problem. just let
> me know what you folks need :)
For efficiency's sake, we'll need some custom drivers for each
major guest OS. It's a lot faster to have say Windows talking
to a native Windows driver which could blast data back/forth
between the driver and the host OS, then it would to have
it talking to a standard emulated device via IO.
Key drivers would likely include video, hard disk, and
networking. The actual interface we can make up, so there's
a lot of freedom. The more efficient the better. For moving
data, I think essentially you get a packet of data ready in
paged-in memory, then notify the VM/emulator via a couple
IO port accesses where the data is. The VM environment
moves the data around and performs an action on it, without
the extra overhead involved in emulating hardware.
If you'd like to help on this front, please let me know.
You can use bochs to develop the driver since it runs Windows
already. Someone is playing with a special Windows video
driver. You might want to either coordinate on that, or
perhaps make a disk/network driver.
It's a pretty modular task. I can help by working with you
to create a simple interface in the bochs IO device models.
You can code the driver itself using the specs.
It should be fairly similar to coding a normal driver, except
you don't worry about IRQs, DMA and all that. There are some
cool possibilities for the video driver, if someone was enthusiastic.
Seems like there is potential to pass rendering directives via
such an interface to the VM, and have the host GUI do the rendering.
Comments?
-Kevin
