[SeaBIOS] [PATCH 0/7] vgabios improvements

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On Fr, 2014-04-11 at 11:31 -0400, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 06, 2014 at 06:59:53PM -0400, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
> > This patch series refactors the vgabios graphics mode framebuffer
> > manipulation code.  It then adds in support for manipulating "direct"
> > framebuffers that modern vga modes use.
> > 
> > This series (along with the followup patches for coreboot native vga
> > vgabios) is also available at:
> > 
> > https://github.com/KevinOConnor/seabios/tree/testing
> 
> FYI, I have pushed this patch series (as well as the follow up
> coreboot native vgabios series) to seabios master.

Updated the firmware builder to include this.  If you wanna try things
out in qemu install coreboot.git package from the firmware builder repo
(http://www.kraxel.org/repos/).   It's enabled for the stdvga:

coreboot-i440fx-seabios.rom: 256 kB, bootblocksize 944, romsize 262144,
offset 0x0
alignment: 64 bytes

Name                           Offset     Type         Size
cmos_layout.bin                0x0        cmos_layout  1160
pci1234,1111.rom               0x4c0      optionrom    26112
fallback/romstage              0x6b00     stage        17654
fallback/coreboot_ram          0xb040     stage        57426
fallback/payload               0x19100    payload      58083
config                         0x27440    raw          3391
(empty)                        0x281c0    null         96792

So you can try this:

qemu -vga std -bios /usr/share/coreboot.git/coreboot-i440fx-seabios.rom

to see it live in action.

Two problems spotted so far:

  (1) ipxe hangs at rom load time.
      can be worked around by adding '-net none' to the qemu cmd line.

  (2) color attributes don't work correctly.  Result is that you can't
      figure which line in your boot menu is highlighted.  Visible in
      Fedora live isos (which use isolinux as boot loader) I think.

cheers,
  Gerd