Date: Tue, 04 Nov 1997 12:30:32 +1030 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), jamil@trojanhorse.ml.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BIOS information preservation (was Re: >64MB) Message-ID: <199711040200.MAA00639@word.smith.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 03 Nov 1997 19:39:36 -0000." <199711031939.MAA22218@usr09.primenet.com>
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> > Anyone likely to complain if I add a new datastructure to i386/bios.c and > > start populating it with stuff that various parts of the system glean > > about the BIOS environment? Or should I be using a procedural lookup > > interface for this? > > My preference would be for a generic mechanism for use in thunking any > BIOS call to a VM86() for processing in that environment. There is a > good "MindShare" book on Protected Mode System Architecture, actually... Jonathan Lemon has one; I've been playing with it but it's a little too far out of date (I think), certainly I've been getting some unhelpful results. The implementation gives you a kernel process (vm86daemon) which runs in vm86 mode; you throw stuff into its address space and call it, which I guess equates to "thunking" in MS-speak. > In any case, a mechanism similar to the SCO "vm86()" system call > would be good (plus it would help with IBCS2 emulation). We have this already; see doscmd for an example of this in action. [... reading Word documents ...] > The VC++ code contains full source code for the "WordPad" program. > > Unfortunately, you need a Win32 (as you suggest) because there is a DLL > involved in reading the Word Format documents. Is this DLL part of Win32, or part of WordPad? If the former, how does MS's stance on pushing the Win32 API onto *nix platforms impact its potential availability? (Actually, given that Willows can call Win32 native DLL's even from *nix-mode, this may be less of a problem than it sounds.) mike
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