Plex86/Bochs VGABios -------------------- The goal of this project is to have a LGPL'd Video Bios in plex86 and bochs. This VGA Bios is very specific to the emulated VGA card. It is NOT meant to drive a physical vga card. Install ------- To compile the VGA Bios you will need : - gcc - bcc - as86 - ld86 Untar the archive, and type make. You should get a "vgabios.bin" file. Alternatively, you can use the binary file "vgabios-XXX.bin", i have compiled for you. Edit your plex86/bochs conf file, and modify the load-rom command in the VGA BIOS section, to point to the new vgabios.bin file. Debugging --------- You can get a very basic debugging system: messages printed by the vgabios. You have to register the "unmapped" device driver in plex86 or bochs, and make sure it grabs port 0xfff0. Comment the #undef DEBUG at the beginning of vgabios.c. You can then use the "printf" function in the bios. Testing ------- Look at the "testvga.c" file in the archive. This is a minimal Turbo C 2.0 source file that calls a few int10 functions. Feel free to modify it to suit your needs. The VGA Bios in its current version has been very little tested. Copyright and License --------------------- This program has been written by Christophe Bothamy It is protected by the GNU Lesser Public License, which you should have received a copy of along with this package. Reverse Engineering ------------------- The VGA Bios has been written without reverse-engineering any existing Bios. Acknowledgment -------------- The source code contains code ripped from rombios.c of plex86, written by Kevin Lawton The source code contains fonts from fntcol16.zip (c) by Joseph Gil avalable at : ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/screen/fntcol16.zip These fonts are public domain The source code is based on information taken from : - Kevin Lawton's vga card emulation for bochs/plex86 - Ralf Brown's interrupts list avalaible at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/ralf/pub/WWW/files.html - Finn Thogersons' VGADOC4b available at http://home.worldonline.dk/~finth/ - Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book - Francois Gervais' book "programmation des cartes graphiques cga-ega-vga" edited by sybex - DOSEMU 1.0.1 source code for several tables values and formulas Feedback -------- Please report any bugs, comments, patches for this VGA Bios to cbothamy@free.fr You can find the latest release at : http://cbothamy.free.fr/projects/vgabios/ For any information on plex86, visit the website http://www.plex86.org/ For any information on bochs, visit the website http://bochs.sourceforge.net/