From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 10 10:19:46 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 41BD616A4CE for ; Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:19:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail54.messagelabs.com (mail54.messagelabs.com [216.82.244.35]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9FFD143D5A for ; Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:19:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jason.dictos@yosemitetech.com) X-VirusChecked: Checked X-Env-Sender: jason.dictos@yosemitetech.com X-Msg-Ref: server-8.tower-54.messagelabs.com!1078942783!1056498 X-StarScan-Version: 5.1.15; banners=yosemitetech.com,-,- Received: (qmail 11679 invoked from network); 10 Mar 2004 18:19:44 -0000 Received: from mail.tapeware.com (HELO yt-internet.tapeware.com) (4.21.59.10) by server-8.tower-54.messagelabs.com with SMTP; 10 Mar 2004 18:19:44 -0000 Received: by mail.tapeware.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72) id ; Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:22:53 -0800 Message-ID: From: Jason Dictos To: 'John Baldwin' , Jason Dictos Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:22:52 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72) Content-Type: text/plain cc: "'freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org'" Subject: RE: How to use int 13 while BSD is running X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:19:46 -0000 Thanks for the reply, however I'm looking for a more DMPI style interface while in protected mode. If we didn't need to be in protected mode, then I'd just leave it the way it is-us booting into DR DOS and using inline assembly to access int 13. However what we're trying to do is move to a 32 bit kernel environment, while still retaining access to realmode interrupts. -Jason -----Original Message----- From: John Baldwin [mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 7:52 AM To: Jason Dictos Cc: 'freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org' Subject: Re: How to use int 13 while BSD is running On Tuesday 09 March 2004 04:24 pm, Jason Dictos wrote: > Hello, > > I'm investigating what resources are out there for accessing bios > addressable devices while BSD is up and running. The situation is > this, currently we licenses Caldera DOS for a program we wrote which > uses the > int13 extensions to manipulate the systems hard drive (i.e. to recover > partition tables and what not). This forces our application to be > written in 16 bit mode, but it does allows us to not have to worry > about loading any driver which would be hardware specific to access > the hard drive. Is there any way to write a driver for BSD which would > put the processor into real mode, therefore allowing us to use the int > 13 api of the bios to read and write hard drives? That way we could > package a stripped down BSD kernel which loaded our driver and gave > our application access to hard disks without having to load any device driver. > > Apologies in advance if this is the wrong mailing list, Look at the loader in src/sys/boot. It is a 32-bit C app that uses BIOS calls to access the disk. It uses a psuedo-kernel called BTX to manage interrupts in vm86 mode and run BIOS code in vm86 mode. You can probably port your software to being a custom loader that uses boot2 to boot off of a floppy. You can also use cdboot to boot a loader off of a CD or pxeboot to boot a loader image over the network. The loader uses libstand which provides several useful things like malloc/free, some basic filesystem support, etc. -- John Baldwin <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve" = http://www.FreeBSD.org ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________