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From: stripes@pix.com (Josh Osborne)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386bsd: Doesn't use BIOS?
Message-ID: <Bu0yzn.BB7@pix.com>
Date: 3 Sep 92 23:09:22 GMT
References: <1992Sep3.194427.14251@engage.pko.dec.com>
Sender: news@pix.com (The News Subsystem)
Organization: Pix Technologies -- The company with no adult supervision
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In article <1992Sep3.194427.14251@engage.pko.dec.com> ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com writes:
>I saw mentioned in the thread on the Diamond Speedstar 24[X] interface problems
>that said that 386bsd does not use BIOS and hence needs the code for the
>Speedstar. This struck me as odd; I can understand skipping the BIOS for the
>sake of speed on certain devices, but why can't 386bsd use BIOS for proprietary
>devices like the Speedstar? Is it an all-or-nothing thing, that is, either we
>forgo using BIOS at all or incur horrible disadvantages? [...]
Well, most BIOS code is not rentrent which means we can't use it without
external locking. It is also going to be orentated towards running in
V8086 mode - so we would have to jump through a VM8086 TSS or call gate,
or some other nonsense. We would also need to be careful to protect
the rest of the kernel for the BIOS code (in case it has bugs).
There may be some other reasons as well (like ones that make it impossable,
as opposed to the ones I listed that just make it more trubble then it's worth).
>[...]. (Then again, it is news to me that you could take advantage of
>hi-res accelerated boards through the BIOS, but that's another issue.)
Well you use the BIOS to enter various video modes, and some video BIOS
code has some other code as well.
--
stripes@pix.com "Security for Unix is like
Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The Multitasking for MS-DOS"
"The dyslexic porgramer" - Kevin Lockwood
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on
when it's necessary to compromise. - Larry Wall