* Stefan Reinauer stepan@suse.de [030812 12:36]:
- x86 realmode code execution.
- legacy api emulation/implementation (pcibios, etc)
In my opinion writing the legacy emulation code (2) in C certainly makes sense, since it will run on all platforms by recompiling and it can be driven by either the realmode idt code (like in linuxbios1) or by an x86emu, depending on your platform.
I looked at the official x86emu code at ftp://ftp.scitechsoft.com/devel/x86emu/x86emu-0.8.tar.gz
This contains something pretty similar than what we need in the v86bios directory. It's a bios emulation that either plugs into vm86 or x86emu.
Looking at the size I got the x86emu emulation including an incomplete legacy bios emulation plus userland pci code (testbios) to below 150k with -Os, so it would fit in a 256k rom with linuxbios and etherboot pretty easily. On x86 most of the code can be dropped leaving probably less than 32k for the legacy emulation.
compiling v86bios.vm86 from above I get everything into 20k.
Stefan