On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Mark Marshall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi. > > After a long absence, I now have a new PC. I have also written a rough > framework for a VGA BIOS. It is very far from complete, but I'd like to > show that I've done something and get some feedback on it.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you doing this for us. > > I'm new to Open Source development, so this is very exciting (I have to tell > myself that otherwise it would be just like being at work). To me, part of what makes FOSS development interesting is the social interaction. It's fun to work with other people who bring in new ideas and who think about things differently from each other yet manage to come together and make something work. And for many people, like it is for me, it's about giving back control to the user. For me, this goes beyond software and into information in general. It irritates me the hoops I have to go through sometimes to get an electronic copy of a scientific journal article. Knowledge should be free. It's one thing to copyright a creative work of fiction, like a novel or a song. And I don't see a problem with trying to recoup your investment, but to make it difficult to access knowledge goes against my sensibilities. </soapbox> > > At the moment I set-up the registers for mode 0x03 and support a couple of > other BIOS calls - most notably int 0x10, function 0x0E (which is what DOS > uses to print a character). Almost everything else is still TODO. You have to start somewhere. I've lost track, but there was discussion about hooking Icarus into Bochs. Some of that may already be in SVN. > > The README.txt describes how to build and test. Using Bochs has been easy. > > I think that I've organised my time now so that I should be able to spend a > few hours a week on this, so hope to start making faster progress. Sweet. > I've attached a diff, generated by svn. I assume that this is the correct > thing to do? This is my first go with svn, I've used CVS a long time ago, > and use perforce at work. Can I request SVN commit access at some point, > that would make things a bit easier. I'll have a look. I haven't done much with patches, so I'll have to see what happens. I may ask you to send me the files you modified in a gzip or something. And yes, we should get Attila to set you up with commit access. > There are a few things that I would like to change in the future. Although I > don't yet access any OGD specific registers, I have written a .inc file that > gives their addresses. This is the wrong thing to do. I would like to make > a text file that fully describes every register in the card, and then have > some perl / python that processed that file and produced all of include > files for every part of the system. This would include verilog files for > the RTL and html/pdf files for documentation. Bitter experience has taught > me that this is a really good idea. You're right. This is one of the many things that we really should do to keep things maintainable. > > MM > > PS. > I think I'm supposed to sign this? > > I am the Originator of the attached code. > I give my permission for it to be copyrighted and licensed under the > Traversal dual license agreement. > Signed by Mark Marshall. Awesome! > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) > -- 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)
