From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj2FR-0001vQ-Vf for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:45:34 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj2FQ-0001vE-Ck for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:45:33 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj2FQ-0001vB-AD for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:45:32 -0400 Received: from [38.113.3.51] (helo=snickers.hotpop.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1Bj2DA-00049O-Go for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:43:12 -0400 Received: from phreaker.net (kubrick.hotpop.com [38.113.3.103]) by snickers.hotpop.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 59FA871FBE for ; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 19:35:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from jbrown.mylinuxbox.org (pcp03144805pcs.midval01.tn.comcast.net [68.59.228.236]) by smtp-3.hotpop.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B3DEFEC510 for ; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 20:21:32 +0000 (UTC) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 16:42:43 -0400 From: "Jim C. Brown" Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] (Before) RFC for new features Message-ID: <20040709204243.GA16636@jbrown.mylinuxbox.org> References: <1089394353.59382.203.camel@pcgem.rdg.cyberkinetica.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Reply-To: 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 Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 06:57:21PM +0100, Natalia Portillo wrote: > About the BIOS question we should have a modular BIOS. > > Like AWARD, AMI, Phoenix, etc, BIOS, that have support for a great variety > of chipsets and CPUs, and are compiled with required modules for each > motherboard. > A modular BIOS designed for qemu is ok (e.g. VGABios vs Bochs BIOS vs some other hand-written BIOS) but supporting a commercial BIOS written for actual hardware is another matter. This is very difficult as such a BIOS will expect different hardware in different places. Not to mention adding support for different types of motherboards/ROM chips. Its easier to just fix the current qemu BIOS. P.S. Someone is working on that iirc.... posted to the list a while back. They loaded qemu directly from a bootloader (so there was no host OS, only a guest OS) and did some hacking so qemu could access the host BIOS directly. So it is possible, just very hard. > > I don't think that the chipset particularly cares what > > extended instructions the CPU can execute... However, BIOS > > support we are definitely lacking. IIRC, the BIOS we are > > using doesn't do any PCI setup > > - so we rely on some code in pc.c and pci.c to make the > > chipset look configured and to set up the BARs. > > > > -- > > Antony T Curtis -- Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty. Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.