[SeaBIOS] [PATCH 0/7] vgabios improvements

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 02:22:51PM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> 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.

I didn't try your firmware, but I did try building coreboot and
seabios from source.  I can't reproduce this ipxe failure.  (Though, I
realize now that the seavgabios call to int 1587 may transition the
cpu from bigreal mode to regular real mode and confuse ipxe.)

Oddly, I can't boot from a hard drive (-hda) when I use the
coreboot/seabios I built though.  It keeps failing at "Booting from
Hard Disk...".

I'll have to look at this further.  If you have any tips on the above
let me know.  (Otherwise, I'll see if I can work through the options
you have in your repos.)

>   (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.

This isn't surprising as the vgabios handling of attributes in text
mode is different from the handling in graphics mode.  It may be
possible to tweak seavgabios so it tries to emulate the text mode
attr handling.

-Kevin