[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
d
Perhaps we will need a new Intel assembler. Does the Video BIOS need to
be able to run in protected mode? What code level should we use (486,
586, 686)?
What about nasm? It is free software and i preffer the sintaxis over gnu as.
Nasm is not full intel sintaxis though.
Some VESA functions need to run in protected mode. We can write asm code that
run in real and protected mode with care about segments. I have see code like
that before.
I have not see a 486 with pci but maybe it exist.
I've got one. I don't know if the PCI is on the 486 chip itself, but it's
sure on the motherboard. And I have a PCI video board plugged into it.
_______________________________________________
Someone with more BIOS experience than I can correct me if I am wrong,
but I would expect that any x86 assembly written should be targeted at a
386. Yes, it would be an extremely unique system that had a 386
processor and a PCI bus, but that is not the reason for my statement.
BIOS code should be as generic as possible. Optimizations using special
instructions should, IMHO, be avoided in general purpose BIOS code. We
are not really worried about performance here as it will be mainly
initialization code and legacy VGA BIOS. As has already been discussed,
the VGA logic will probably be slow enough that even the worst BIOS
routines will be more than fast enough.
Keep it simple and straightforward.
Patrick M
_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
