On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 04:29:50PM +0100, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
- Luc Verhaegen. libv@skynet.be [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.