From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Apr 4 05:29:51 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id FAA11521 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 4 Apr 1995 05:29:51 -0700 Received: from ns.dknet.dk (root@ns.dknet.dk [193.88.44.42]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id FAA11515 for ; Tue, 4 Apr 1995 05:29:35 -0700 Received: from login.dknet.dk by ns.dknet.dk with SMTP id AA29612 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Tue, 4 Apr 1995 14:28:08 +0200 Received: by login.dknet.dk (4.1/SMI-4.1DKnet00) id AA23640; Tue, 4 Apr 95 14:27:20 +0200 From: sos@login.dknet.dk (S|ren Schmidt) Message-Id: <9504041227.AA23640@login.dknet.dk> Subject: Re: grafx console & DDB To: roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Thomas Roell) Date: Tue, 4 Apr 95 14:27:20 MET DST Cc: hasty@star-gate.com, terry@cs.weber.edu, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de In-Reply-To: <95Apr4.121110met_dst.42270@papa.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>; from "Thomas Roell" at Apr 4, 95 12:11 pm X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk [exellent description of vm86 vs BIOS calls deleted] > Summararing said, VBE calles under VM86 are not a very good idea. It's only > usable for dumb framebuffer drivers. And it has serious limitation. What > I have been thinking of is to simply write a 8086 emulator, so I don't need > the VM86 handling anymore, which is not implemented everywhere. However this > would be a major task, and I doubt that it buys you a lot of advantage > over just writing a driver. > > - Thomas I have to agree with this picture, but I'm not sure how much a 8086 emu would help you (the BIOS might still be buggy, the BIOS may not be readable etc etc). There is a 8086 emu floating around that might serve your purpose, but again I think (as you ) its not worth it. However (getting back to the topic) simply using it in the context of bailing out to DDB on panic situations could be usefull, even if not all combinations of cards etc would work... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Soren Schmidt (sos@FreeBSD.org | sos@login.dknet.dk) FreeBSD Core Team So much code to hack -- so little time ..