On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 04:29:50PM +0100, Stefan Reinauer wrote: > * Luc Verhaegen. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070317 15:39]: > > Are you saying there that, for the likes of filo, grub, etherboot, etc > > will be forced to set up a full VGA console themselves? > > Not more than at the moment. You need functions that write characters to > 0xb8000, more or less. But you need them in v2 as well. LinuxBIOSv2 does > not provide a library or anything for console output.
Right, but we do need to provide a working mode, with dac and fonts loaded. > Noooo! ;-) No worries. This is only for everything up to loading the > payload. The bootloader (payload) will be able to use an initialized > VGA console (and, eventually find out via the linuxbios table whether it > is text mode or framebuffer and what address and resolution it is?) Ah, right :) > The idea is just to hide the _LinuxBIOS_ _debug_ messages from VGA > console, as it is too late for debugging. In my tests FILO would > immediately start printing the grub menu in text mode, but that is the > first thing you will see, after a fraction of a second. Ah, of course, this intention clearly was lost on me :) Yes, this is all very sensible indeed. > It is one thing I found out during the last few days, starting to work > on vm86/x86emu: In v3 we are so fast again that the need of a bootsplash > during _LinuxBIOS_ execution might not exist. Maybe the payload should > do this, or the CMOS setup menu (to be shown while waiting for the > keypress timeout), that some people talked about,.. or.... > > I am not at all negative. I am just thinking out loud where stuff is > done best. Ah, you talked about a possible bootsplash _last_ week :) > It does this, but in v3, it will not use it anymore for printing "all > devices initialized. looking for payload. etc pp". Right. > Well, v3 currently knows how to init the VGA console by executing an > option rom, but we will be changing this soon, I hope (for instance when > bringing the Epia port over) Well, i'll soon have rudimentary VGA modesetting + font loading working in a userspace app, that, when ported over, will hopefully get every VGA compatible device a working console quickly and easily. Well, when the hardware gets initialised far enough to allow that. Luc Verhaegen. -- linuxbios mailing list linuxbios@linuxbios.org http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios