On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 1:31 PM, Petter Urkedal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2008-07-16, Timothy Normand Miller wrote:
>> [...] That
>> pushes the VGA BIOS and the HQ microcode up in priority.
>
> I believe HQ has not yet been connected to the bridge?

No.  Not yet.  We're going to get to that once we have debugged it to
this point.  However, that doesn't mean we can't start on the coding
and them merge things later.  Would you like to work with me to
architect this?

>
>> The next tasks, things we really need help with, include:
>>
>> - HQ microcode.
>
> When we start on the microcode it may be an idea to come up with an
> (manually enforced) ABI for utilise the registers as best as we can
> without ending up with a web of dependencies to rework if we need to
> change something.  Is there a register-based ABI/practices we can adapt?
> Otherwise, I can write up some ideas.

Are you referring to the assignment of "names" to scratch space
addresses?  We definitely need something like that, but it may be very
program-dependent.  Unless things turn out to be surprisingly small,
we'll have one program for VGA text, one for VGA graphics, and
eventually, one for DMA.  BIOS or kernel can reload the program as
necessary.

I'm always in favor of creating good design structures.  512 program
words doesn't seem like a lot, but that's part of the challenge --
fitting a program into that space.  To keep our sanity, we really need
to be organized about it.  This is especially important for us and our
progeny to be able to maintain it later.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure
what pre-existing paradigms might apply here, so lets develop
something new.


-- 
Timothy Normand Miller
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti
Open Graphics Project
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