[OpenBIOS] PIC Passthough( VGA )

Mark Cave-Ayland mark.cave-ayland at ilande.co.uk
Sun Dec 17 11:22:29 CET 2017


On 15/12/17 23:26, Jd Lyons wrote:

> Thanks Mark, I’m unsure how to get Openbios to execute the Fcode, I can 
> load it to the correct address on my PCI card, via a little hack to 
> Openbios.
> 
> I’d really like to just go ahead and fix the fact that Openbios doesn’t 
> probe for Fcode Rom’s on PCI devices. I know this will likely break a 
> few things, requiring other fixes. If I had some idea of where to start, 
> some sample code I maybe able to hack something together, but it would 
> likely break more than it fixes.
> 
> I’m sure you're busy, I’m retired and this is just something to keep my 
> occupied, tho I’m not really qualified to do it.

I really wouldn't worry about being qualified. My involvement with 
OpenBIOS and QEMU started because I wanted to try and boot some old 
Solaris HD images in QEMU, and that was 8 years ago and I'm still not 
quite there - it's been a great learning experience though :)

The part that takes the time is doing the investigation rather than the 
patches, so just being able to hack up something that works gives us 
something to work with. Yes, I am fairly busy with other bits of work 
right now but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

> If it could be added as a priority to Openbios, to probe and execute 
> FCode Rom’s on PCI devices, that would be great. I’m sure someone will 
> take it up when they have a little spare time.

I would say that there are 2 different tasks here:

1) Add PCI option ROM support to OpenBIOS

 From looking at the code it appears that the pc-bios/vgabios-stdvga.bin 
option ROM is added to QEMU's default PCI VGA adapter, so you need to 
add the relevant properties to "reg"/"assigned-addresses" using your 
previous 
http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2000.html 
link as a guide.

The above link suggests the key is to look at offset 0x30 in 
configuration space for that device and use that to determine ROM base 
address but please experiment and report back what happens.

2) Try executing the FCode and see what fails

Obviously we know about the config-* Forth words, but creating Forth 
wrappers around those words shouldn't be too hard - I can point you 
towards commits that do similar things when you get to that point.

> I’m having trouble CC ing the list, I know stupid of me.
> 
> Any idea what the unnamed FCode in the detok is?
> 
> Does detok just not understand it, or is it words or methods?

 From memory I believe it's an anonymous Forth word, i.e. one where the 
dictionary name is empty but it can still be called by its address.


ATB,

Mark.



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