>
> I'm pretty sure that a rom bios file is not THE answers to let ELKs run on
> IBM PCjr, Tandy 1000 because those systems, even though they aren't IBM
> Compatible, still use chipsets and stuff. And AFAIK a BIOS, like I said
> before, is specific for one and only one chipset.
I'm not saying the file is the answer, I just wanted to see what other
people thought. The system, at least as far as I know, looks to have
worked well for the CP/M OS which ran a wide variety of platforms so long
as they had an 8080 or Z80 processor and some free lower memory.
And I think the answer is
> writing a video driver for every different type of system. You could make a
> tiny framebuffer like thingie in the kernel and than every program who
> want's to make use of it send an IOCTL to the kernel that other programs
> will not be allowed for now. Then the kernel could make the transistion
> from framebuffer to the current video type in the system (Tandy, PCjr, VGA,
> EGA, etc). Than you wouldn't have to write a complete INT 10 driver in the
> NanoX program, but only in the kernel and it would be pretty universal
> because everybody would be so generous to write their own driver for their
> kind of videocard. At least, I would (try).
That may be the best solution, my suggestion of the file was simply to
keep info as to which chipset was used or which interupt to use for video
seperate, as well as info such as memory location not to be used (which I
think it the case with the PCjr and Tandy, as I think they use a chunk of
main memory for video memory). I can't say that the BIOS file suggestion
is the way to go, I just want to make the suggestion incase anyone found
it helpful. Hopefully elks can be made to have all the features we want
without being very system-dependant.
Dan
