[SeaBIOS] [PATCH] Support more than one vga card

[Sebastian Herbszt]

Glauber Costa wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 00:31 +0200, Sebastian Herbszt wrote:
>> Glauber Costa wrote:
>> > On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 00:02 +0200, Sebastian Herbszt wrote:
>> >> Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> >> > On 05/03/2011 03:23 PM, Sebastian Herbszt wrote:
>> >> >> Glauber Costa wrote:
>> >> >>> It is theorectically possible for a system to have more than
>> >> >>> one pci vga card. In particular, I am interested in the use of SGAbios
>> >> >>> as a pci device, alongside of a normal vga bios in QEMU.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Can't SGAbios be loaded as an option rom without this change?
>> >> > 
>> >> > But then you're loading it as a legacy ROM which is fairly ugly and 
>> >> > requires additional SeaBIOS hackery.
>> >> 
>> >> Why is this ugly and which additional hackery does it need?
>> >> SGAbios is a legacy ROM; the PNP header is disabled and there is no PCIR.
>> > 
>> > It is, but does not need to be (I've also patched sgabios to include a
>> > PCIR). Since it is a device, it is nice to have it plugged it to a bus.
>> > If for nothing else, for discovering capabilities - A guest using
>> > sgabios this way is now aware that it has a double-head system.
>> 
>> I don't think "it is a device", more likely a functionality. SGAbios doesn't add a new
>> device/hardware to the system.
> 
> This depends on how you model it. One can think that this functionality
> is achieved by hooking a device into the system. "Hooking a device" is
> how most functionality is achieved in real systems anyway.
> 
>> Do you plan to add a new (emulated) PCI device and deploy SGAbios thru its BAR?
> Yes
>> Do you plan to add support for "Google Memory Console"?
> No.
> 
>> 
>> > Also, let us not focus only in the specifics: Having two pci vga cards
>> > is a real possibility, there's even a use case for that, as anthony
>> > mentioned.
>> 
>> If you call the init function of two vga roms, will the last one win and hook int 10h?
> 
> Yes.

This might not always be the desired case. How can i control which card wins?

> And this is totally orthogonal to whether it is loaded as a pci device,
> or in vgaroms/
> The statement is true for both methods.

Shouldn't VGAbdf be set to the last (the winning) card then?

> In the specific case of sgabios, it chains the int10h calls to whatever
> was there before, which is, IMHO, a very sane thing.

Sebastian