Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add BIOS splash image support

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net>]

On 16.12.2008 22:51, Laurent Vivier wrote:
> Le mardi 16 décembre 2008 à 22:46 +0200, Blue Swirl a écrit :
>   
>> On 12/16/08, Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws> wrote:
>>     
>>> Blue Swirl wrote:
>>>       
>
>   
>>>>  The control channel may still be needed.
>>>>
>>>> Alternatively the BIOS could load the image and fade parameters from a
>>>> new ROM or from the configuration device and draw it to screen. This
>>>> would need some PNG support to BIOS, or that the image stored in raw
>>>> form.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>  Yeah, having QEMU render to the VGA directly is a bit ugly.  It would be
>>> nicer if the BIOS actually rendered the image but I'm not sure I think we
>>> should reject the patch just because it doesn't.
>>>       
>> Actually this way the image can be in full color even if the emulated
>> device was an EGA in text mode.
>>     
>
> And you can provide the image name on the command line, and complexity
> is in Qemu, not in BIOS.
>   

If one of the goals of QEMU is to be somewhat similar to hardware, this
should be done in the BIOS.

What happens if the BIOS provides a splash screen? Will it override the
QEMU splash screen?

> But in fact, my first idea was to read the image data from the
> configuration device (which is always possible with LOGO_CMD_OFFSET),
> but when I saw how it has been done in VirtualBox, I though it was a
> good idea.
>   

Modern x86 BIOSes read the splash screen from the BIOS ROM and the
settings from NVRAM (sometimes the BIOS ROM is used for that as well by
reflashing a sector of the ROM on every boot).

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
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