Another way of using ADLO

[Adam Agnew]

Hi Bendany,

Perhaps I missed something in your email.. But if you've loaded ADLO +
Bochs BIOS then you have Int13 support. Why not run Grub from the flash
disk then instead of etherboot+AA? Is it because of the speed?

- Adam Agnew


On Thu, 1 May 2003, bendany wrote:

> Hm, It seems that my way is buggy, But it works. ;-)
>
> I am trying to use the VGA with LinuxBIOS. since I am trying to use the Xwindows.
> if you want to start the Xserver, you must have the vgabios. I think when the Xserver startup, it will probe the videocard. but
> since the LinuxBIOS does not have the videobios. so the Xserver crash.
> you can using the Xserver with the kernel framebuffer driver. such as fbdev. but it lack the ability of hardware accel. such
> as play the movie fullscreen. so use the ADLO & bochs bios & vgabios will give you a second way to run the Xserver.
> since the LinuxBIOS switch the CPU into protected mode early, and the commercial vgabios runs in realmode. so the commercial
> vgabios cann't run after the LinuxBIOS. so the ADLO will do some preparation works. Load the bochs bios & vgabios. switch the
> CPU to the realmode. execute the bochs bios.
> the bochs will try to init the vgabios first.it scan the address 0xC0000 to 0xC7FFF in 2k increments. and then scan the General
> ROM from 0xC8000 to 0xDFFFF in 2k increments, so if we put the etherboot+AA patch after the address of vgabios. the etherboot
> will be excuted after bochs init the vgabios.
> the way why I do this is that the bochs bios is lack the ability of dealing with the real hardware. such as ide harddisk. In my experiment,
> when I use the IBM 30G harddisk. the speed of lilo & grub load the kernel normally, but when I use the flash IDE. the speed of lilo &
> grub , or syslinux, is too slow.
>
> if you want to run the etherboot with the bochs bios. you must do some work yourself.
> first, using ADLO to get your own vgabios. my mainboard chipset is sis630. the vgabios is 48kb. plus the etherboot+AA rom.
> and the bochs bios .altogether 144kb. and the ADLO only provide 3 types of elf loader. so you must create the 145kb loader yourself.
> and also modify the loader.s.
> and you will need to modify the etherboot5.0.6+AA patch too.
>
> hope help.
> Best regards.
>