According to Elmar Haneke ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> Jeroen Janssen wrote:
> > > this might be done with minimal programming on the host-side.
> >
> > I assume the host-side "display" interface will be independant of the
> > guest OS (at least that probably *should* be)?
>
> As far as you are emulating hardware this should be true.
>
> If we are using an specialized Guest-OS-Driver for the Display there
> certainly will be much dependence between the Host-Side and the
> Guest-Side. The Guest-OS-Driver needs some efficient way to bring the
> data to the Host's screen.
>
> This mechanism might be the same for several Guest-OS-Drivers.
>
> I thik that it would not be efficient to emulate some Hardware for
> this data-transmission.
A while ago I drew a nice picture that might help you understand the idea:
+----------+ +----------------+
| VGA BIOS | | special driver |
+----------+ +----------------+
- -V- - -V- - - -|- -|- - -|- - -
+----------+ | | |
| VGA emu | | | |
+----------+ | | |
V V V V V
+-----------------------------+
| display code in user |
+-----------------------------+
The idea is to provide the user space with accurate VGA emulation, so
everything works as expected (I'm especially thinking about guest os'es that
don't have special driver support (yet); the only drawback they would
experience is lower performance).
If, on the other hand, the special driver is loaded, it might as well bypass
the vga emulator completely, and send whatever it gets to do directly to the
user-space, leaving Plex86 with stuff such as window moving (which would
obviously be *much* faster).
> > > Assuming an fast Ethernet-Emulation (or
> > > IP-networking) it might be done without any host-side programming.
> >
> > why is that? do you want to send the display data over IP?
>
> The X-Windows Protocoll is often used via TCP/IP-Sockets - quite
> common for UNIX-machines.
Not for the average Joe who needs to run Win9x under WinNT/2k for debugging
a driver or such. And besides: X is *very* slow compared to directly passing
the information.
Wouter
--
* Wouter Coene * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* C.O.R.E/OMTA/Plex86 * C development/Code maniac *
* "When people run in circles we call them crazy, *
* when planet's do we call it orbiting" *
