On 9/5/07, Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Anton Soppelsa wrote: > >> > * From the discussion going on here, it looks like initialising the > >> > video card is not straightforward at all. Is a PCI VGA card more > >> > difficult to set up that any other types of PCI cards? > >> > > It's totally straightforward, if you have proper documentation. The > > VGA BIOS, also, is just code in ROM that the CPU executes. It is > > called from the system BIOS at an appropriate time. VGA is only made > > complex by the fact that PC BIOS and software assume certain specific > > capabilities of the graphics card. > > > Does the PC BIOS expect anything *besides* 80x25 text mode? What's the > minimal set of expectations the PC BIOS has of the graphics card?
If I boot DOS, what I have seen with some BIOSs is that the system comes up in 640x350 mode, 80x25 with 8x14 font. Then it switches to 640x400 (8x16 font) and stays there. > Let me guess: it's not standard, right? ;) I'm thinking of PC BIOSes > that give a splash screen during POST, for instance. I last experimented with a VGA BIOS when most PCs didn't have an interesting splash screen. So I have no idea what they're doing there. > What's a reasonable minimum, then? No idea. I think we should do a set of standard modes and then fix problems as they come along. If we can do 640x480x16 planar, then there's no reason we can't also do 320x200x2 packed. -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
