Re: [OT] Crazy idea: Design open-source graphics chip

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Timothy Miller wrote:

> You're not entirely correct here.  I attempted to write a VGA BIOS for a 
> card which did not have hardware support for 80x25 text.
> 
> I first tried intercepting int 0x10.  I quickly discovered that most DOS 
> programs bypass int 0x10 and write directly to the display memory.  As a 
> result, very little of what should have displayed actually did.

 Of course, but DOS is not BIOS and the assumption is we want to use the
adapter as a boot console and with Linux.  The former is handled with
appropriate firmware and the latter with a driver.

 Actually I had an opportunity to use a few PC/AT headless systems (no
video adapter at all, although one could be placed in a PCI slot) with an
option called "serial console redirection" in the firmware.  Their BIOS
setup program proved to work just fine over a serial line (unfortunately a
VT100 terminal was assumed, so I had to type e.g. ^[OP to "press" <F1>,
but it worked) as well any console output, including LILO (which had to be
taught to use the regular console instead of accessing the serial port for
I/O directly).

-- 
+  Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland   +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+        e-mail: macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, PGP key available        +
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