Re: [ANNOUNCE]: VM86 Daemon

[Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@yahoo.com>]

--- Antonino Daplas <adaplas@pol.net> wrote:
> A new device seems more powerful and more generic. 
> Generic in a sense
> that other subsystems besides fbdev can use it to
> access the BIOS or

The new device is going to need to sort out multiple
adapters. Using /dev/fbX avoids that problem. You'll
also be able to get the /dev/fb code into the kernel.
Getting a driver in that creates /dev/vm86 is going to
be harder. 

I'm not clear on what /dev/vm86 does. Why couldn't the
radeon driver exec vm86d with a parameter of /dev/fb0.
vm86d would then open/IOCTL the radeon driver to
identify the PCI device and what actions are needed.
After it resets and gets the EDID data it would IOCTL
them back into /dev/fb0 and exit. You need to know
which PCI device so that you can set up the right
VBIOS ROM. Each adapter would get it's own vm86d, but
they wouldn't hang around long.

I haven't played with this yet but the vm86d should
use the new klibc. That would allow it to run early in
the boot process. The driver could then exec it if
needed. It would also make vm86d tiny.

The Radeon and Rage128 cards need a reset if they are
reporting zero VRAM.

=====
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl@yahoo.com

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