From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1BV0g9-0006u9-LZ for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:15:09 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1BV0g7-0006tj-WB for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:15:09 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1BV0g7-0006tg-Tz for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:15:07 -0400 Received: from [24.21.209.245] (helo=pdx.silverbeach.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1BV0f4-000330-0h for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:14:02 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pdx.silverbeach.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0F591BF33C for ; Mon, 31 May 2004 21:14:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Kyle Hayes Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] VGA BIOS source code Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 21:14:08 -0700 References: <200405312200.03734.bobb@absamail.co.za> <40BB92D1.6040508@fabianowski.de> In-Reply-To: <40BB92D1.6040508@fabianowski.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200405312114.08329.kyle@silverbeach.net> Reply-To: kyle@silverbeach.net, qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Monday 31 May 2004 13:17, Bartosz Fabianowski wrote: > Alright, after digging into QEMU's graphics card emulation and into the > VGA BIOS source, I came to a few conclusions: > > a) SDD 6.53 is doing something utterly wrong. [snip] > > c) [snip] The entire VESA VBE > implementation is rather broken, shaky and incomplete. > > b) The way the graphics card is emulated by QEMU (and Bochs and plex86 > for that matter) is totally inefficient, error-prone and overly > complicated. [snip] Is there a reasons for the a c b ordering? I think you are probably a little harsh on this code. It may be far from perfect, but it does (mostly) work. > d) Finally, as a conclusion from a) to c), I believe it would be best to > ditch the entire VGA BIOS and implement all functions of the graphics > card in C, natively, inside QEMU. This will be more efficient and less > error prone. Now, I haven't seen the patches mentioned by Fabrice that > emulate a CLGD54xx. But I certainly hope it is all native and not a > half-native half-emulated solution like the current one. Getting something in place that pretends to be a known chipset and that can act like a dumb framebuffer would probably help. That seems to be the direction that Fabrice and Co. are going. The Cirrus Logic chipset sounds like a good one for this. Best, Kyle