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Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:11:59 +0100 (CET)
From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl>
To: Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>
Cc: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>, John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com>,
       chakkerz@optusnet.com.au,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [OT] Crazy idea:  Design open-source graphics chip
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.55.0401301858070.10311@jurand.ds.pg.gda.pl>
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Organization: Technical University of Gdansk
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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@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available        +
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