VGABIOS is working under LinuxBIOS

[Li-Ta Lo]

Ron,

I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card 
is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
just like normal bios system.

I will try the reduced x86emu and see if it works too.

Ollie

Li-Ta Lo  writes:
> Ron,
>
> I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card 
> is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> just like normal bios system.
>
> I will try the reduced x86emu and see if it works too.

How large was your resulting linuxbios image.

I am trying to see if it looks possible to put LinuxBIOS with VGABIOS support
and a linux kernel all in a 1M rom chip.

Eric

[Li-Ta Lo]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 20:04, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Li-Ta Lo  writes:
> > Ron,
> >
> > I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card 
> > is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> > just like normal bios system.
> >
> > I will try the reduced x86emu and see if it works too.
>
> How large was your resulting linuxbios image.

with all the debug/tracing output compiled in, I have to set

option ROM_IMAGE_SIZE=0x1b000

actually I think 0x1a000 should be enough.
> I am trying to see if it looks possible to put LinuxBIOS with VGABIOS support
> and a linux kernel all in a 1M rom chip.

The linuxbios image should be under 128kB for fallback/normal each. So 
if you can squeeze the kernel to 768Kb, it would be O.K.

Ollie

[Richard Smith]

--- "Eric W. Biederman"  wrote:
> > I just got the vgabios emulation working in the
>
> LinuxBIOS. The VGA card

Man thats excellent news.  Were the in-kernel patches
from scitech soft helpful?
> > is complete inited before the kernel is loaded.

I've learned from the vbios guys that the term for
this is "POSTed."
> I am trying to see if it looks possible to put
> LinuxBIOS with VGABIOS support
> and a linux kernel all in a 1M rom chip.

In response to scitech softs request about getting the
emu into the kernel Paulo Marques did some work on
reducing the size of x86emu by reworking a lot of the
instruction calls to be multi-function and removed a
lot of duplicate code.  He felt that with some more
work it would be possible to get the emulator down to
32k.

All that in 1M should be possible.  I was able to get
General Sofware's bios + kernel + initrd in 1M on our
last board and that setup contained kexec,
TCPIP,ext2,pcmcia,ornoicoo drivers and a minium set of
pcmcia tools compiled with uclibc.  I think I topped
out at 960k.

=====
Richard A. Smith
Bitworks, Inc.

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[Li-Ta Lo]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 21:14, Richard Smith wrote:
> --- "Eric W. Biederman"  wrote:
> > > I just got the vgabios emulation working in the
> >
> > LinuxBIOS. The VGA card
>
> Man thats excellent news.  Were the in-kernel patches
> from scitech soft helpful?

A little bit, it came too late and I have done almost all the stuff.
> > > is complete inited before the kernel is loaded.
>
> I've learned from the vbios guys that the term for
> this is "POSTed."
> > I am trying to see if it looks possible to put
> > LinuxBIOS with VGABIOS support
> > and a linux kernel all in a 1M rom chip.
>
> In response to scitech softs request about getting the
> emu into the kernel Paulo Marques did some work on
> reducing the size of x86emu by reworking a lot of the
> instruction calls to be multi-function and removed a
> lot of duplicate code.  He felt that with some more
> work it would be possible to get the emulator down to
> 32k.

I think the next thing would be consolidating various effort
on the x86emu. There are just too many different versions
to deal with.

Ollie

[Richard Smith]

> I think the next thing would be consolidating
> various effort
> on the x86emu. There are just too many different
> versions
> to deal with.

Well the one you want ot go off of is definitely
scitech's thats where X.org's version comes from.

=====
Richard A. Smith
Bitworks, Inc.

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[Tao Liu]

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:40:49 -0700, Li-Ta Lo  wrote:
> Ron,
>
> I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card
> is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> just like normal bios system.
>
> I will try the reduced x86emu and see if it works too.

Great! Would you commit it to CVS?
I would be glad to test it.

[Li-Ta Lo]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 21:00, Tao Liu wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:40:49 -0700, Li-Ta Lo  wrote:
> > Ron,
> >
> > I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card
> > is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> > just like normal bios system.
> >
> > I will try the reduced x86emu and see if it works too.
>
> Great! Would you commit it to CVS?
> I would be glad to test it.

I will do it once I clean up it a little bit. There are still some hacks
which are very ATI 9800 specific.

Ollie

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card 
> is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> just like normal bios system.

well, Ollie, you have just conquered one of our last barriers to desktop 
usage.

Nice work!

ron

[Li-Ta Lo]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 21:03, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> > I just got the vgabios emulation working in the LinuxBIOS. The VGA card 
> > is complete inited before the kernel is loaded. Now I have vga console
> > just like normal bios system.
>
> well, Ollie, you have just conquered one of our last barriers to desktop 
> usage.
>
> Nice work!

As I promised, it will be done before my baby is born. Now I have to
worry about my baby coming ahead of schedule ;-)

BTW, the FILO vga console works fine too.

Ollie

[Richard Smith]

--- "Ronald G. Minnich"  wrote:
> well, Ollie, you have just conquered one of our last
> barriers to desktop 
> usage.

Amen.  Where I think you are also really going to see
growth is in embedded systems.

=====
Richard A. Smith
Bitworks, Inc.

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[Adam Talbot]

is/will there be a "How To" released on how to add VGA support?
-Adam

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Smith" 
To: "Ronald G. Minnich" ; "Li-Ta Lo" 
Cc: "LinuxBIOS" ; "Greg Watson"
; "Stefan Reinauer" 
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: VGABIOS is working under LinuxBIOS
> --- "Ronald G. Minnich"  wrote:
> > well, Ollie, you have just conquered one of our last
> > barriers to desktop
> > usage.
>
> Amen.  Where I think you are also really going to see
> growth is in embedded systems.
>
> =====
> Richard A. Smith
> Bitworks, Inc.
>
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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> _______________________________________________
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Li-Ta Lo]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 21:22, Adam Talbot wrote:
> is/will there be a "How To" released on how to add VGA support?
> -Adam

If it is done correctly (by me), you don't need a HOWTO. It work out of 
the box like 'BIOS'.

Ollie

[Adam Talbot]

Great to hear, Thx
-Adam
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Li-Ta Lo" 
To: "Adam Talbot" 
Cc: "Richard Smith" ; "LinuxBIOS"

Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: VGABIOS is working under LinuxBIOS
> On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 21:22, Adam Talbot wrote:
> > is/will there be a "How To" released on how to add VGA support?
> > -Adam
>
> If it is done correctly (by me), you don't need a HOWTO. It work out of
> the box like 'BIOS'.
>
> Ollie
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> If it is done correctly (by me), you don't need a HOWTO. It work out of 
> the box like 'BIOS'.

Ollie, that is true for AGP cards, but for the case of "integrated" 
vgabios in the one flash image we'll still need the step where we pull the 
VGABIOS out of the factory BIOS.

ron

[Adam Talbot]

I have been told that pulling the vgabios is easy with DD.  Never tried this
my self.  Currently I have been decompressing the rom image and adding the
vga bios in by hand.  Do you think it would be possible to add a script into
the buildtarget script, or a vgabios rip script, to rip the vgabios out of
the memory?
-Adam

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald G. Minnich" 
To: "Li-Ta Lo" 
Cc: "Adam Talbot" ; "Richard Smith"
; "LinuxBIOS" 
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: VGABIOS is working under LinuxBIOS
> On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> > If it is done correctly (by me), you don't need a HOWTO. It work out of
> > the box like 'BIOS'.
>
> Ollie, that is true for AGP cards, but for the case of "integrated"
> vgabios in the one flash image we'll still need the step where we pull the
> VGABIOS out of the factory BIOS.
>
> ron

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Adam Talbot wrote:
> I have been told that pulling the vgabios is easy with DD.  Never tried this
> my self.  Currently I have been decompressing the rom image and adding the
> vga bios in by hand.  Do you think it would be possible to add a script into
> the buildtarget script, or a vgabios rip script, to rip the vgabios out of
> the memory?

That's a good idea, we'll look at it if nobody else does. It's easy with 
dd, the trick is finding it (it's not always where you might expect it to 
be).

ron