New subject: ASM/C and 16/32 bit questions.

17 Feb 1998


      madman@zip.com.au said:
...
This might be a really bad idea but let me know what you think anyway
:) How about doing a really low level boot loader of some sort so if
your booting linux it goes into 32bit protected mode early where as if
you boot dos or win it loads into 16-bit mode with all the int's that
are needed?
I don't think we'd gain much from the 32-bit stuff. It'd mean that we have 
to provide both 16-bit and 32-bit versions of a number of functions, and who'd 
ever use the 32-bit API?
Linux is always going to have to handle going into 32-bit mode itself, in case
it's booted from a standard BIOS. We'd have to write a whole new Linux boot
method to get it using the 32-bit BIOS API, and nobody else would ever use it.
I think we should stick to pretending to be a normal BIOS for now. We can try 
adding extra stuff when it's working properly.
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David Woodhouse, Robinson College, CB3 9AN, England.   (+44) 0976 658355
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Re: [OpenBIOS] ASM/C and 16/32 bit questions.