Re: Win95 style graphical boot screen

Jonathan H. Pickard (marxmarv@fix.net)
Thu, 22 Feb 1996 03:10:33 -0800 (PST)

Quoth Andreas Kostyrka:
>
> On Wed, 7 Feb 1996, Laszlo Vecsey wrote:
>
> > Alan already recommended that someone throw together an application that
> > uses svgalib which would be executed at the start of the rc
> > initialization. [...]
> >
> > ...the point I was trying to make with the VGA 320x200x256 was that its a
> > standard mode and (it would be a make config option anyway) if it could be
> > initialized right when the kernel is decompressed, then that would be
> > pretty cool.
> In my eyes there only two ways to go:
> 1) LILO loads the image, and there is perhaps a Esc-keypress recognized
> by the kernel which allows for switching away the image. This way the
> kernel bloat isn't to much :)
> 2) A SVGA proggie is run when init starts up.

Wasn't there some talk of an init ramdisk that just contained kernel load
modules? How about one that throws up a title screen in 320x200x256? The
binary data for the image could be contained in the module itself and thus
would disappear from core as soon as rmmod'ed. (This whole shenanigan could
be skipped if AltGr were held down at boot...)

(For that matter, wouldn't 640x400x256 work on all VGA cards, from 256k on
up?)

Speaking of AltGr, there should be some way to pass the shift state
according to BIOS as of just before BIOS destruction to those procedures
that require it (perhaps as a kernel global)? I'm sure init would like to
hear about the shift state eventually as well...

> Andreas

-jhp

> --
> Andreas Kostyrka
> Email: andreas@medman.ag.or.at
> Fax: +43/1/7070750 Tel: +43/1/7077571, +43/664/3020166 (cellular)
> Copyright 1996 Andreas Kostyrka. Microsoft Network is prohibited from
> redistributing this work in any form, in whole or in part.

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