OpenBIOS

openbios@openbios.org

4297 discussions

Re: [OpenBIOS] Video (particularly 440GX)
by Ronald G. Minnich 22 Feb '00

22 Feb '00

On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Chong Chee Yong wrote: > so, i gather that this dedicated pci bus connects to the graphics chipset. > and since it appears as another pci device, it must implement the pci > configuration space, and thus it has an expansion ROM base address > register which we can determine if a BIOS exist or not. If it has one, > then it is likely that the initialization of the graphics chip is done by > the this BIOS instead of the system BIOS. Unfortunately it may not be that simple on motherboards with integrated graphics. There is only one NVRAM chip. This NVRAM is owned by the PIIX4E bridge. I am not sure how they would do the expansion ROM base address for the AGP stuff. But it is certainly worth a look. - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

Re: [OpenBIOS] Video
by Ronald G. Minnich 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

the second device on the bridge is in essence a dedicated pci bus for the graphics hardware. ron - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

asm code
by Edwin Rhodes 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

hi sorry this is slightly off topic but i need some asm code to clear the screen in the linux kernel -- just after it says uncompressing linux. how would i implement this in assembler, that would compile under gas. thanks edwin ps. will you eventually implement all the standard bios calls so that other os's such as dos etc will run under open bios? or will it be just a bios for linux? thanks and good luck. edwin

3 2

RE: [OpenBIOS] Video
by Wallace I. Kroeker 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

There has been great discussion on video here so I decided to see how the video was handled in the linux kernel. Sure enough they use "int 0x10" to handle the video setup etc. The code does detection of the video type (e.g. looks for EGA/VGA) and sets things up appropriately and then continues to use the "int 0x10" calls to actually output some of the fine linux boot messages. As for the use of the full 256K region I suspect we will run into a lot of other conflicts with cards other than video cards. The bios that is built into these cards (video, m-systems disk on a chip) expect that they will live in the C0000 to C8000 region (from what I've read). Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but we have to avoid using this area if we want things to work with these different cards. As for PCI initialization stuff you may want to check out the Ralf Brown page. He has a very nice piece of software that finds all your PCI devices with lots of information on the devices. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/ralf/pub/WWW/files.html This has his interrupt list AND "RBpciv1.19 - PCI device info program". We should be able to use some parts of this code to enumerate the PCI for setting up the information on the attached devices. Also, the following book is very good and worth purchasing: PCI Hardware and Software, 4th Ed. by Edward Solari and George Willse ISBN 0-929392-59-0 http://www.annabooks.com/fx020064.htm I am starting to look into the System Management Bus to determine memory size. If anyone has any code that is doing this already that would be appreciated. My status: I have my the OpenBIOS booting the 440BX with a set amount of memory but haven't got a small enough linux payload which would fit in the legal BIOS area of my machine. The video and serial is working to allow me to interact with the basic openbios. I am looking at implementing enough of the BIOS floppy to at least do a load from floppy for the time being. I have tried this in a minimal system but am waiting for another flash chip so that I can do some live testing. I compared my memory setup with the code that Ron provided and they are basically identical although I haven't confirmed this with total boot from a flashed bios (later this week hopefully). Wallace > -----Original Message----- > From: Ronald G. Minnich [SMTP:rminnich@lanl.gov] > Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 11:13 AM > To: openbios(a)elvis.informatik.uni-freiburg.de > Subject: Re: [OpenBIOS] Video > > the second device on the bridge is in essence a dedicated pci bus for the > graphics hardware. > > ron > > - > To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de > with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

Re: [OpenBIOS] Video
by Jeff Garzik 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

Chong Chee Yong wrote: > > how is it supported directly by the 440gx bridge? > or do you mean it is connected directly instead of via > the usual agp/pci slot? > > On Sun, 20 Feb 2000, Ronald G. Minnich wrote: > > > yes indeed it does. It is in fact supported in a very direct way by the > > 440gx bridge chip. Now that I have the docs on it I'm going to see how > > hard it is to bring up ... Most integrated video chips are connected directly BUT are configured either via the VGA registers and/or the PCI config registers... -- Jeff Garzik | Building 1024 | Viva la open source! MandrakeSoft, Inc. | - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

1 0

Re: [OpenBIOS] Video
by Ronald G. Minnich 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Chong Chee Yong wrote: > not familiar with this, but does the integrated graphics chip appear as > another PCI device? yes indeed it does. It is in fact supported in a very direct way by the 440gx bridge chip. Now that I have the docs on it I'm going to see how hard it is to bring up ... ron - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

Assembler
by Burt A1C Jesse M 20 Feb '00

20 Feb '00

Hi folks, I'm sorry if it was mentioned somewhere already, but I was just curious...in some of the messages, one posts some snippets of asm.. what assembler is this, gas? nasm? Thanks.. - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

Re: [OpenBIOS] Video
by Jeff Garzik 19 Feb '00

19 Feb '00

Chong Chee Yong wrote: > not familiar with this, but does the integrated graphics chip appear as > another PCI device? I dunno about the 440GX specifically.... If the motherboard supports PCI the graphics chip will a PCI device 99.9% of the time :) Embedded controllers are a bit different though... > On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Ronald G. Minnich wrote: > > the thing is, as long as you depend on vga bios support, you're never > > going to be openbios. One reason is that graphics are increasingly a chip > > on the motherboard, with the vga bios in the motherboard nvram. There > > isn't room for linux and that vga bios in the nvram. Second is, until you > > get all the secrets out, we're locked in to braindead bios'es. -- Jeff Garzik | The ultimate Windows 98 keyboard: Building 1024 | Ctrl, Alt + Del on one big key! MandrakeSoft, Inc. | - another cute fortune - To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

1 0

openbios source code
by Ross 18 Feb '00

18 Feb '00

Can somone send me a copy of the openbios source code I can not get the copy from the openbios page to unzip under windows 95. //Ross

1 0

Re: [OpenBIOS] code
by Ross 17 Feb '00

17 Feb '00

Can somone send me a copy of the openbios source code I can not get the copy from the openbios page to unzip under windows 95. //Ross ---------- > From: Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich(a)lanl.gov> > To: openbios(a)elvis.informatik.uni-freiburg.de > Subject: Re: [OpenBIOS] code > Date: Thursday, February 17, 2000 6:52 AM > > On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Marcel Wijlaars wrote: > > I tried it at home last night and compiled just fine but didn't word > > because of the scsi thing. > > I use a rather old linux distribution at work, maybe thats why it did not > > work. > > I'll try again at work with a new linux distibution and a ide disk. > > > > great, if you can tell me what's up with scsi bootparams I'll try to fix > it at my end. Or, even better, if you fix it i'll take your patch :-) > > ron > > - > To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo(a)freiburg.linux.de > with 'unsubscribe openbios' in the body of the message

2 1

Jump to page: