On 8 Apr 2002, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> Ronald G Minnich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > I need some help on the following:
> > - S3 VGABIOSes are trying to use the timer. I put the vga setup at
> >   the end of hardwaremain(), hoping that the timers were on. They are not.
> >   Can somebody see why port 40/43 are not doing anything.
>
> And yet etherboot uses the timer and it works.  Linux uses the timer
> and it works.

so I wonder what they're setting up that I am not getting right before I
call vgabios. hmm.


> To work correctly you must look exactly like an ibm pc/xt whatever.
> You must give the firmware everything it ever wanted/expected.  This
> is a major can of worms and the more you dig into I suspect the more
> weird unxpected and strange cases you will find.  This is sane in an
> emulator where you can controll what is going on  but in the core I
> really doubt it.

no, I think you have a good point. But we're not going to support
everything. I am writing off a lot of cards. Anyway, you know way more
than I do in this area so I expect I'll learn the hard way and then ask
you what I should have done :-)

on the upside, we do have all the matrox cards working. They make
reasonable demands ...

But, if I am going to have an emulator in there, I would sure prefer it
to work under linux. And all the options I've seen for Linux carry a lot
of baggage -- geting a simple emulator seperate from, e.g. X11, is not
simple. Very non-modular stuff, it seems. Can dosemu do this? I've seen
what XFree86 can do with the BIOS roms and it is quite impressive -- but
you have to bring X along with it :-(

ron

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