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From: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Message-Id: <199708101952.VAA16366@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Subject: Re: Fun with DOSCMD (was Re: modifying boot mgrs FROM FREEBSD)
In-Reply-To: <19970810043000.13645@micron.efn.org> from Jonathan Mini at "Aug 10, 97 04:30:00 am"
To: j_mini@efn.org
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 21:52:54 +0200 (CEST)
Cc: hfwirth@ping.at, emulation@FreeBSD.ORG
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According to Jonathan Mini:
> Helmut F. Wirth stands accused of saying :
[...]
> > I thought a little about doscmd in console mode too, that is when no 
> > Xserver is running. Here it should be possible to do real hardware
> > access for hardware not sensitive for the kernel and security. For
> > doscmd in non X11 environments I think we could simply map the VGA/VESA
> > original BIOS of the card and use it under VM86. We would need an
> > advisory call (ioctl) to the screen drivers (syscons, ...) to save
> > and restore the environment and for screen switching.
> 
>   Not for anything but a few video modes. (i.e. text modes and like
> 320x200x256) Also, I am leery of letting my DOS app change the state of my
> system console's hardware.

Why? Is there anything dangerous that could happen? And even if so, I think
it might be a good idea to have as an option with a big mean red label by
it's side saying "WARNGING! This is dangerous!". Because, it ought to be
quite a lot faster if the program is question does a lot og graphics, no?

  /Mikael