[ANN] Port of GPL vgabios to gcc

[Kevin O'Connor]

I have made an initial pass at porting the open source vgabios at:

http://www.nongnu.org/vgabios/

from bcc/as86 to gcc.

The new code can be found in the SeaBIOS git repository.  To download
and build the code use:

git clone git://git.linuxtogo.org/home/kevin/seabios.git
cd seabios/
make out/vgabios.bin

The resulting binary can be used on qemu.  For example:

cd seabios/
make
make out/vgabios.bin
cp out/*.bin ../testqemu/
qemu -L ../testqemu/ -hda myimage

This new vga code is still preliminary.  I can start qemu, but there
are known bugs and unimplemented features.

The goal of porting the vga bios to gcc is to make the code more
understandable and easier to modify.  The code could potentially be
enhanced to run on real hardware.  (The current code will only run on
emulators.)

-Kevin

[Joseph Smith]

On Wed, 6 May 2009 23:53:24 -0400, Kevin O'Connor 
wrote:
> I have made an initial pass at porting the open source vgabios at:
>
> http://www.nongnu.org/vgabios/
>
> from bcc/as86 to gcc.
>
> The new code can be found in the SeaBIOS git repository.  To download
> and build the code use:
>
> git clone git://git.linuxtogo.org/home/kevin/seabios.git
> cd seabios/
> make out/vgabios.bin
>
> The resulting binary can be used on qemu.  For example:
>
> cd seabios/
> make
> make out/vgabios.bin
> cp out/*.bin ../testqemu/
> qemu -L ../testqemu/ -hda myimage
>
> This new vga code is still preliminary.  I can start qemu, but there
> are known bugs and unimplemented features.
>
> The goal of porting the vga bios to gcc is to make the code more
> understandable and easier to modify.  The code could potentially be
> enhanced to run on real hardware.  (The current code will only run on
> emulators.)

Real Hardware? That would be really cool :-)

Great Work!!

[Paul Menzel]

Am Mittwoch, den 06.05.2009, 23:53 -0400 schrieb Kevin O'Connor:

[…]
> The new code can be found in the SeaBIOS git repository.  To download
> and build the code use:
>
> git clone git://git.linuxtogo.org/home/kevin/seabios.git
> cd seabios/
> make out/vgabios.bin

I am wondering, if a separate repository would be more suitable for
example because of the commit log. Or are vgabios and SeaBIOS so similar
or going to be merged somehow?

Thanks for your work,

Paul

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 09:21:01AM +0200, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 06.05.2009, 23:53 -0400 schrieb Kevin O'Connor:
> > The new code can be found in the SeaBIOS git repository.  To download
> > and build the code use:
> >
> > git clone git://git.linuxtogo.org/home/kevin/seabios.git
> > cd seabios/
> > make out/vgabios.bin
>
> I am wondering, if a separate repository would be more suitable for
> example because of the commit log. Or are vgabios and SeaBIOS so similar
> or going to be merged somehow?

Thanks.  I put them in the same repo because they both need some of
the same 16bit support infrastructure.  I didn't want to duplicate
that code; it can be split out later if it needs to.

-Kevin

[Rudolf Marek]

Hi Kevin,

Great,  I think this is what libv or I need.  I have in plan to create 
some simple mode3 only VGA rom for K8M890.

I have some questions:

Have you spoken with orig authors? Maybe they want such rewrite too
Is it really GPLv3? I thought it was LGPL.

The resulting rom image is independed to seabios right?

Thanks,
Rudolf

Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> I have made an initial pass at porting the open source vgabios at:
>
> http://www.nongnu.org/vgabios/
>
> from bcc/as86 to gcc.
>
> The new code can be found in the SeaBIOS git repository.  To download
> and build the code use:
>
> git clone git://git.linuxtogo.org/home/kevin/seabios.git
> cd seabios/
> make out/vgabios.bin
>
> The resulting binary can be used on qemu.  For example:
>
> cd seabios/
> make
> make out/vgabios.bin
> cp out/*.bin ../testqemu/
> qemu -L ../testqemu/ -hda myimage
>
> This new vga code is still preliminary.  I can start qemu, but there
> are known bugs and unimplemented features.
>
> The goal of porting the vga bios to gcc is to make the code more
> understandable and easier to modify.  The code could potentially be
> enhanced to run on real hardware.  (The current code will only run on
> emulators.)
>
> -Kevin

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 01:33:55PM +0200, Rudolf Marek wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> Great,  I think this is what libv or I need.  I have in plan to create  
> some simple mode3 only VGA rom for K8M890.
>
> I have some questions:
>
> Have you spoken with orig authors? Maybe they want such rewrite too
> Is it really GPLv3? I thought it was LGPL.

I reached out to them six months ago, but got no response.  I'll reach
out to the bochs list tonight.

All of SeaBIOS is LGPLv3.  I'm flexible on the licensing of my changes
if there is an issue.
> The resulting rom image is independed to seabios right?

Yes.
> Thanks,
> Rudolf

-Kevin