> > You need to make 2 devices for the above: > > > > First is sitting as an independent node on the Ethernet, and can do X > > and video decoding [the original goal of this list]. > > > > The second thing is a NIC+BIOS add-on card for PCI/PCIE, which > > emulates a VGA card/keyboard/mouse. Who wants to boot or install his > > PC over ethernet buys this card, otherwise it will be not required, > > as the kernel loads and networking is up, you can access the other > > box the same way. > > > You could make such a card. However, as I said, there are VGA BIOS > routines which are in the BIOS on the video card for booting. After you > boot an OS, you are going to be using a driver for that OS. The only > problem is that running DOS would be limited to using the BIOS routines > -- probably not a great concern anymore.
There needs to be enough DOS support to run things like firmware updaters, Seagate's Seatools and similar. :-( I'm assuming FreeDOS can run all this stuff? > > BTW: is it possible for the X box to open a new window when some PC > > boots up and display its console? > > Basically, no. It would have to start X for this to happen. Since the > boot mode uses only the VGA BIOS routines to directly access the > hardware this wouldn't work. The VGA-to-Ethernet-X11 card could include an X11 client similar to xterm(1). This might end up being a lot of code to put into firmware but it should be possible. Anyone disagree? The card's VGA BIOS routines would have to translate VGA BIOS calls into X11. >> We need for the VGA-to-Ethernet-X11 card to provide the computer's >> firmware with whatever it actually needs for a console. I think that >> is a "VGA text interface", but maybe there is some braindead bios out >> there that requires a framebuffer to draw graphics in? > > I would hope that a BIOS would access the frame buffer using only the > VGA BIOS routines. It is possible to draw graphics with VGA BIOS calls, > but I don't think that most BIOSes use those. There are also CGA BIOS > calls for graphics that draw little blocks which are larger than pixels. Ugh. To be safe, I guess we need to provide those. > ARMs have become more powerful over the years so although the 7 isn't > nearly as powerful as a Pentium, it could probably run X. Some early X terminals used a 68k. They run fast enough (except for playing an mpeg), the problem is having enough memory. > No, firmware needs to be on the other type of flash memory (NOR) that > can address individual bytes like SRAM. So there isn't a byte addressable NOR flash device that is user pluggable/unpluggable ? _______________________________________________ Open-hardware-ethervideo mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-hardware-ethervideo
