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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Hardware Status
Date: 16 Aug 1995 21:00:51 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <40tma3$bp6@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <DDAL0I.D75@seas.ucla.edu> <40orni$6os@park.uvsc.edu> <87rb2me550.fsf@hrothgar.mindspring.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
rsanders@hrothgar.mindspring.com (Robert Sanders) wrote:
[ ... how to find a PS/2 mouse ... ]
] > They examine the equipment word at 40:10h. For all systems after
] > the XT, bits are decoded as:
]
] [...]
]
] > This information is filled in via the post routine and would be
] > retrived in a VM86() environment (which we don't have one of) by
] > calling INT 11h (post code is returned in AX).
]
] I'm all for the ability to do magic tricks with VM86, but that's not
] the only way. The real-mode bootstrap mechanism could tuck some of
] these important bits away for the protected-mode kernel to access
] later. Linux has been doing this forever, and it works just fine.
Space restrictions; this is why the other often-mentioned holy
grail is a two stage boot process using BIOS to load more BIOS
code (/boot?) from the / directory, and then *that* code is what
does the protected mode switch and loads the kernel.
This gives you much more space to work with, but is less elegant
than a VM86() approach, and most of the work would not be usable
cross-platform.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.