Hi!
If I'm gonna start to think about coding, I have to know what to code :)
Do you want to write it in assembly or in C? How are you going to deal with 32 bit code?
I'd suggest that the bios switches to protected mode in a very early state. This would allow to develop most of the code (except the setup code) in C, which is sure what we want (At least I think so)
Hmm. But int xx interfaces *still* need to be in 16-bit assembly. Still, it might be nice to provide description "how to call this from 32-bit prot mode", i.e. specification saying:
BIOS can be called iff CS contains selector with base = 0xf0000 ...
Do we want to support an Award compatible bios which has 16bit calls or do we want to save up the space to implement newer features?
You *must* have int xx calls, which are 16bit, or dos will not boot.