[Xorg] The big multiconsole nasty

Jon Smirl jonsmirl at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 7 08:45:09 PDT 2004


--- Egbert Eich <eich at pdx.freedesktop.org> wrote:
> Some comments:
> 1. POSTed BIOSes are not always located at 0xc0000. Embedded systems
>    have them at all sorts of different places.
> 2. If we want to use vm86 mode for POSTing we will have to map the 
>    first 1MB anyway, therefore it should be possible to retrieve this
>    BIOS from user land without having to map the kernel. Also to
>    use a POSTed BIOS we also need to know the int vectors (and some
>    other data from the first 64MB).
>    Most systems without vm86 probably don't keep this data around 
>    thus require reposting anyway.
> 3. Even on primary cards you sometimes would like to have a copy of 
>    the unposted BIOS around.
> Therefore it would suffice to have a way to obtain the (unposted)
> PCI BIOS image.

While trying to fix the radeonfb driver, BenH has run into some laptops
that take the system BIOS and VBIOS, put them into a single image,
compress it, and put it into a ROM. They can do this because the video
is build into the motherboard. I don't know how you are going to find
this without help from the system or using the C000:0 copy.

=====
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl at yahoo.com


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail




More information about the xorg mailing list