Re: beginnings of allowing more than the basic 80x25 VGA screen resolution

[Gerd Knorr <kraxel@suse.de>]

Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@cl.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> > As far as I know, not only the VGA driver does not do any mode
> > switching, even the VESA one doesn't (because the protected mode

Exactly.  A simple way to get more screen lines is to load a 8x8
screen font though.

> real-mode assembly file. Any video card we care about these days
> should support VBE 2.0/3.0 I think, and those interfaces don;t require
> you to be runnign in real mode.

vbe 2.0 yes, not sure about 3.0.

For mode switching from protected mode you need 3.0 though, 2.0
protected mode support is _very_ limited (you can do panning and
palette register programming, but no mode switching).  And I think
even for vbe 3.0 you need some real mode code to figure the protected
mode entry point, so paravirtual linux wouldn't be able to do that
without help from xen.

  Gerd

-- 
panic("it works"); /* avoid being flooded with debug messages */