[SeaBIOS] Setting cursor position from initial SeaBIOS boot screen + changing cursor color

Kevin O'Connor kevin at koconnor.net
Sat Jan 12 23:18:29 CET 2013


On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 05:40:19AM -0500, Robert Butler wrote:
> As a bit of personal hobby, I've recently started studying SeaBIOS in the
> hopes of making it behave in a more "life-like" manner (see: VMware's BIOS).

I'm not sure what you are referring to by "life-like".  Can you
elaborate on the features you'd like to add?

> However,  I seem to be at 
> a bit of a loss for where to start looking for information on the API that I
> can use inside SeaBIOS, though. Can someone point me in the right direction?
> Perhaps someone can link 
> me to an html page (or PDF, even) or something that gives me an idea what I
> can use during BIOS initialization? 

If you're looking for the BIOS API then I suggest taking a look at
Ralph Brown's Interrupt List (RBIL).  I have links to that and other
resources at:

http://www.seabios.org/Developer_links

If you're attempting to add code to SeaBIOS, then you can generally
just interact directly with the desired functions and variables.

> Is there ANY information out there that I can use while doing this?
> 
> I mostly need access to the following:
> 
> *  The cursor's x/y position
> 
> *  Foreground and background text color

These are part of the VGA BIOS - you can look up the interrupt 0x10
functions in RBIL.  There's also a vgabios implementation in seabios
itself in the vgasrc/ directory.  One can get a feel for what's
supported by looking through that code.

> *  Low + Extended memory information

Also available via the BIOS interface (see RBIL interrupt 0x15) and
internally available via the RamSize variable.

> *  Installed disk information

Available via BIOS interface (see RBIL interrupt 0x13) and via various
functions internally (eg, see src/block.c).

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-Kevin



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