Ramon van Handel wrote:
> Yes it is, but an optimised video driver isn't the real world --- it's a hack
> made specifically for VMs. You don't HAVE to make it work like in the real
> world! It should be possible to do what you want (if it isn't it needs to
> be added!)
well, if I would want to write a VESA VBE2 interface, I think this would
be "a way", but ok.. for now concentrate on a VM specific video driver.
>, but I wouldn't do it this way for the optimised driver. What I'd
> do:
>
> (1) let the guest allocate a piece of physical memory
> (2) let the guest pass the address to the plex86 plugin using I/O ports
> (3) the plex86 plugin will use the specified chunk of memory for its
> framebuffer.
this means that the guest os driver needs the ability to allocate memory
and physically "lock" it. (can this be done in all OSes we intend to
support with plex86?)
AND it ALSO means that starting with a specified amount of physical
memory, the memory "available" to other programs would ALWAYS be
dependant on the video memory requested... that doesn't seem like a
"good" plan to me (ie an 16Mb guest, selecting a 1024x768x32bit graphics
mode would allways have at most 12Mb available physical memory for
"other" purposes)
as for the I/O ports, are there any specific ports "free" that can be
used for this purpose.
--
Best regards,
Jeroen Janssen
+++
"Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits?"
-- Economics explained
(Terry Pratchett, The Colour Of Magic)
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