*BSD News Article 19395


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!cs.weber.edu!terry
From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: V86 mode & the BIOS (was Need advice: Which OS to port to?)
Message-ID: <1993Aug11.164429.6015@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University, Ogden, UT
References: <107725@hydra.gatech.EDU> <245jrfINNrc0@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <hastyCBLnIF.Cyq@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 16:44:29 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <hastyCBLnIF.Cyq@netcom.com> hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) writes:
>I am very interested on having a dosemu box for 386bsd. I am tired of 
>initializing S3 cards and extracting the info from S3 like if I was
>a dentist pulling a teeth out of a patient not under anestesia.
>
>However, this approach of i/o bitmap permission is not adequate for
>S3 cards or 8514/a cards. the cards have a sparse i/o range. The highest
>address is 0xe2e8 or there abouts. 

I am concerned about the use of a VM86 to do S3 card initialization.  What
happens when I take the same card and put it in a machine where a VM86 is
either not possible or requires writing an entire hardware emulation?

I am thinking in particular of the EISA-based DEC Alpha and MIPS R4000
boxes currently being ported.  With all the gyrations, as annoying as they
may be, I can still use the cards on diverse architectures without being
tied to an 8086 instruction set melted into the BIOS, because the BIOS is
ignored.  If you stop ignoring the BIOS, this breaks these platforms.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.