Kevin Lawton wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm just recently got interested in plex86 (I currently make heavy use of
> > VMWare at home), so i've got a few questions that I hope you can answer.
> >
> > * VGA Bios
> > Can the Elpin VGA bios also be used with plex86? or do "we" need to write our
> > own VGA bios?
>
> Answer later. We are always free to roll our own. For most folks,
> it's really only necessary to boot the OS. After that, the OS
> takes over. For graphics modes, a custom guest-specific video driver is best.
>
> > * "CUSTOM GUEST OS SPECIFIC DRIVERS"
> > Are there any thoughts about how the concepts of writing a video driver (ie
> > for Windows) should work (and can it be possible to allow "host" OpenGL usage ?)
> >
> > * Fullscreen (virtual termninal) support?
> > Any ideas how/where this can be done?
>
> I have some idea on the architecture of passing data between the
> guest and host OSes. I'm hoping some others render some opinions
> beyond that because I'm not much familiar with direct video
> facilities. Let me know if you want ideas with general
> architecture.
>
> This kind of thing will be important to performance for plex86,
> so it's good to start looking into it. And we're getting
> close to the point where we can start using special drivers.
>
> Here's some notes I have:
>
> -Kevin
>
How about we 'export' opengl functions?
The guest driver will then be a simple pass through into our interface. Lower level
calls from the windows GDI core can be reformed into standard calls. We can pass the
calls on immediately or queue them (in the guest if desired) and burst them on later.
By staying off the hardware, we will be more portable plus, as we are using higher
level primitives, more information is transferred on each call thus giving us a
performance boost.
Access to 'frame buffers' could be arranged by exposing the relevant opengl buffer to
the host although the mechanics for doing this would need to be checked. Something
along the lines of mapping it through pseudo pci on our 'graphics card' would
probably work. As opengl is a client - server system, in effect, the whole of the
guest driver / plex86 driver just becomes a transparent pipe between the client and
the server.
Just my thought but I'm pretty sure that it would work quite well.
Bryan.
