> As cool as I think the VESA stuff is, our experience is that it's also a > mistake to do it via switch to 16-bit mode. Making it work right gets > really tricky, as you just learned with SMP; that's only one possible > hazard. We've been enabling graphics with an emulator-based approach for > a few years now, and it does work well. Code available in the linuxbios > source tree, if anybody wants to mess around with it.
>> You can also use VM86 mode on 386 (but not AMD/x86-64). >> It actually isn't so bad -- I'd have to think it would >> be much easier than going back to real mode. Of course, >> it isn't an option on 64-bit machines, which may effectively >> leave you in the same place. If anyone wants to do either of these, be my guest. They're both better approaches than what is there now. I lean toward the emulator, and it would be nice if it could be done with the bulk of the code outside the kernel (keep the kernel a little smaller, a little safer). Russ
