"Ronald G. Minnich" wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, James wrote:
??? Are you sure you have no VGA BIOS? We ought to call the VGA BIOS before doing anything else to get the video up.
no, no, no. no VGA bios. I can't waste the space on that 16-bit stuff. I'm already using up a lot of the flash on linux at this point. Also I want proprietary, closed stuff out of there.
Using the VGA bios would be harder than it sounds ...
It shouldn't be all you should do on boot is use the init code in the VGA BIOS, this will initialise the card and allow you to use it... After that you don't need to return to the VGA unless you want to use the 16bit stuff.... You will find that the init code with just start the card and return control to you. Remember though if it is a Colour VGA you will find it at 0C0000, however if it is a MDA card it won't be there..... Another point worth thinking about is that other types of card have various 'boot' ROMs (ie expansion ROMs) you _need_ to init these - some will take boot, some will be SCSI which will initialise the bus and detect what is attached etc...
...more later...
-- Yours
Matthew
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