Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:37:52 +1000 From: Andrew Reilly <andrew-freebsd@areilly.bpc-users.org> To: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> Cc: bug-followup@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG, hhc@tut.by Subject: Re: amd64/94896: Where support VESA Modes for AMD64 kernel ? Message-ID: <20060410103752.GA19743@gurney.reilly.home> In-Reply-To: <200604091705.k39H5Fi0049956@lurza.secnetix.de> References: <44391881.3090907@thebeastie.org> <200604091705.k39H5Fi0049956@lurza.secnetix.de>
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On Sun, Apr 09, 2006 at 07:05:14PM +0200, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> I don't know what kind of "hi-res console mode" you have
> seen on Gentoo, and I don't know what Gentoo might be doing
> to enable such a thing. Maybe they have implemented direct
> support for certain graphics hardware (like KGI), or maybe
> they switch to VESA mode before switching to amd64 mode.
>
> However, there is no way to call the x86 VESA BIOS in amd64
> ("long") mode, because amd64 has no vm86 mode. It does not
> work, and Gentoo certainly doesn't do that either.
I don't know how Gentoo does it either, but I was thinking
about this the other day, and wondered how possible it might be
to write simple (non-fast) real-mode x86 emulator/interpreter
(which could perhaps be unloaded when finished), just for this
sort of thing. It wouldn't need to emulate hardware, which is
what takes up a lot of complexity in systems like bochs, because
you want the emulated code to frob the real hardware: that's the
point.
I have a vague recollection that Sun (and Apple?, and DEC?) had
to do this sort of thing for their Sparc and PowerPC systems
when they started building PCI systems around their non-x86
processors.
Might even make ia32 systems neater, because you wouldn't need
to muck about with vm86 mode to get those jobs done.
--
Andrew
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