Ronald G Minnich wrote:
>
> On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> > Stephan provided that info. scitech's x86emu and MILO's x86emu code
> > provide good starting points. The PPC x86 emulator is a good reference
> > too.
>
> Sorry I am being slow about this. Is one of these "the best"? Simpler (I
> don't need fast, I need simple and reliable). In other words, if I want to
> write a little program called vga_bios that will read in the bios and do
> what needs to be done, what's the best one of these to use?
Unfortunately none of them are the best :( They are best useful as
reference, not copying code directly.
> > Option Number Two is to hack the kernel framebuffer driver to do
> > initialization from the "bare metal." IIRC there is some SiS fbdev code
> > to do this. S3 cards are pretty easy to init from the "bare metal" too.
>
> yes, we have done this. But people keep demanding invidia support. Somehow
> we have to resolve this one.
Yeah, good point. Did you catch my earlier mention of nVidia? nVidia
video BIOS has 32-bit code in it, which breaks a lot of existing ia32
bios emulators. Since you are likely on ia32 anyway and don't need insn
emulation, you can probably just trap the BIOS calls it makes...
Has anyone jumped to nVidia's video BIOS and tried to run it directly?
There is always the chance it might Just Work(tm).
I'm pretty sure that the number of BIOS INT calls made by video BIOS are
minimal... some video BIOS I am pretty sure do not even do BIOS INT
calls.
Jeff
--
Jeff Garzik |
Building 1024 |
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