>this means that the guest os driver needs the ability to allocate memory
>and physically "lock" it. (can this be done in all OSes we intend to
>support with plex86?)
Yes. An OS that doesn't support that would also not support DMA transfers...
>AND it ALSO means that starting with a specified amount of physical
>memory, the memory "available" to other programs would ALWAYS be
>dependant on the video memory requested... that doesn't seem like a
>"good" plan to me (ie an 16Mb guest, selecting a 1024x768x32bit graphics
>mode would allways have at most 12Mb available physical memory for
>"other" purposes)
But that's no problem; after all, you can specify in plex86.conf how much
physical memory is allocated in total for the guest... what does it matter
where the memory comes from ? All memory is the same you know... (well, not
completely true, but for this purpose it is ;))
>as for the I/O ports, are there any specific ports "free" that can be
>used for this purpose.
Have a look at your favorite hardware reference and pick an interesting port.
Any port above 0x1000 is usually free... but there are plenty free ones below
there, too.
-- Ramon
