[SeaBIOS] [RFC PATCH 0/4] vgabios runtime hardware detection

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 03:46:04PM +0100, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>   Hi,
> 
> This adds runtime hardware detection to vgabios.  Survived light (vga
> text mode) testing.  The isa bits are completely untested as qemu -M
> isapc is foobar atm.
> 
> Comments on the approach?

It's an interesting question - is it better to compile a vgabios for a
specific hardware or to make a vgabios compatible with several
different pieces of hardware.  I don't know what the right answer is.

There's some simplicity for qemu/kvm in that only one blob is needed.
BTW, the PCI spec does allow (with some magic to the pci struct) for
multiple roms to be concatenated together to obtain a single blob for
different hardware.

I have some changes in my repo pending for vgahw.h (to support the
remaining cirrus vbe calls).  I'd want to get those pushed before
changing the way vgahw.h works.

Also, function pointers are available in 16bit mode - so something to
consider in an auto-detection scheme.

-Kevin