Daniel Phillips wrote:
On Friday 28 January 2005 08:08, Steven J. Hill wrote:
Daniel Phillips wrote:
The only interesting part is the text mode initialization. NothingInt15 being partially supported is fine, but again, that is for x86.
beyond 80x25 monochrome text is required, and that's just for
convenience so you don't need a custom kernel to boot. Personally,
I don't think it's worth supporting VESA modes at all. Since the
card specs are open, VESA support is pointless. This makes the
bios code very short and sweet. Only a fraction of Int15 has to be
supported on the PC. Other arches should be a piece of cake.
What I think I am hearing is that since this card is completely open,
nothing special has to be done for other architectures since we will
be provided with all of the necessary initialization sequences. If
that is the case, then as long as this card adheres to the PCI
standard well, architectures other than x86 should be fine.
There is no PCI standard for text display on a console. If you want to see text at boot time before X sees the card, you have to do something special for each architecture. I have no idea how this is handled for, e.g., PPC but I'll look into it.
PPC usually use a technique similar to suns SBUS. Called OpenBoot IIRC... The card has code on it that gets 'run' by the system bios. The openboot is really just a defined interface. IIRC it's arch independent as well... I'll try & dig up some info on the way CHRP systems doit. I think I have an original CHRP arch manual round here somewhere.
IIRC the way it was originally designed to work was the ROM was forth & a simple forth interpreter in the BIOS 'ran' the script to set the card up.
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