loranb@sco.COM (Loran Ball) (10/17/89)
Does anyone know if the Super VGA standard has been finalized yet? If it has, where can I get a copy of this spec? Which manufacturer's boards support this new standard? Thanks, -loranb (uunet!sco!loranb loranb@sco.COM)
chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett) (10/19/89)
In article <3458@scolex.sco.COM>, loranb@sco.COM (Loran Ball) writes: > Does anyone know if the Super VGA standard has been finalized yet? Nope, it is very close, and we hope to pass it up to the full VESA meeting sometime early next year (and they will make it final). I will probably post a summary of the results of our next meeting sortly after we have it. I am a bit out of date since I missed the last two technical meetings, but we are making a lot of progress -- the standard should handle any board currently in production, and it should allow for virtually any resolutions we might want. STB is committed to supporting the standard, as are Orchid, Video 7/Headland Technologies, ATI, and several others participating in the meetings. I expect we will have upgrade BIOSes for our current cards out within 4-6 months of the spec release. One major feature that I hope makes it through is the ability to use some parts of the BIOS in protected mode (without the overhead of ABIOS) -- this may make support of higher resolution graphics modes more board independent in future versions of Xenix, et al. (The procedure involves optional copying of small blocks of code from the BIOS into the executable code segment of the operating system, so changing the card results in changing the code.) Charles > If it has, where can I get a copy of this spec? > Which manufacturer's boards support this new standard? > > Thanks, > > -loranb (uunet!sco!loranb loranb@sco.COM) =============================================================================== "Those who would sacrifice ** Charles Marslett liberty for security, ** STB Systems, Inc. <-- apply all std. disclaimers deserve neither." ** Wordmark Systems <-- that's just me -- Benjamin Franklin ** chasm\@attctc.dallas.tx.us ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. The one line about STB supporting the VGA 2.0 standard (super VGA standard) is the party line -- an official statement.
loranb@sco.COM (Loran Ball) (10/21/89)
In article <9777@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett) writes: >One major feature that I hope makes it through is the ability to use some >parts of the BIOS in protected mode (without the overhead of ABIOS) -- this >may make support of higher resolution graphics modes more board independent >in future versions of Xenix, et al. (The procedure involves optional copying >of small blocks of code from the BIOS into the executable code segment of the >operating system, so changing the card results in changing the code.) Besides running in protected mode, BIOS must be re-entrant for Xenix to use it. Xenix doesn't use any BIOS provided on PC/AT motherboards or expansion boards. We can do this because the hardware is all standardized at the register level. I'm not a member of VEGA, but the only way I can envision the new BIOS standard supporting DOS and Xenix/Unix environments properly is to have two versions of it on the VGA adapter. A non-reentrant, real mode version for DOS and a reentrant, protected mode version for Xenix/Unix. =========================================================================== Loran Ball (loranb) uunet!sco!loranb loranb@sco.COM ===========================================================================
chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett) (10/23/89)
In article <3464@scolex.sco.COM>, loranb@sco.COM (Loran Ball) writes: > Besides running in protected mode, BIOS must be re-entrant for Xenix to > use it. Xenix doesn't use any BIOS provided on PC/AT motherboards > or expansion boards. We can do this because the hardware is all standardized > at the register level. > > I'm not a member of VEGA, but the only way I can envision the new BIOS > standard supporting DOS and Xenix/Unix environments properly is to have > two versions of it on the VGA adapter. A non-reentrant, real mode version > for DOS and a reentrant, protected mode version for Xenix/Unix. There seems to be a bit of confusion here . . . DOS need not run non-reentrant code, in fact most of the code I run under Unix also runs under DOS quite well (most was even written originally for DOS). The only problem we forsaw, and the only one we tried to address is the fact that protected mode OSs have a bad habit of disallowing (concurrent) access to the BIOS ROM area. The routines needed to make the I/O hardware independent are of the form: do a bit of register-to-register manipulation, perhaps using the stack OUT DX,AL do a bit more OUT DX,AL ... prehaps access the video memory segment (using a preloaded ES?) ... RET (far) or IRET Such code is quite compatible with DOS and protected mode OSs. It is a very small subset of the IBMish ABIOS in terms of functionality and in terms of effort required of the BIOS writer and of the OS driver writer. So I like it. The code can be copies into an OS code segment if desired, and the return patched to a "near" one, or it may be executed in place (often slower, because the ROM is on the bus, perhaps byte wide, but certainly not as convenient or as fast as motherboard RAM). > =========================================================================== > Loran Ball (loranb) uunet!sco!loranb loranb@sco.COM > =========================================================================== =============================================================================== "Those who would sacrifice ** Charles Marslett liberty for security, ** STB Systems, Inc. <-- apply all std. disclaimers deserve neither." ** Wordmark Systems <-- that's just me -- Benjamin Franklin ** chasm\@attctc.dallas.tx.us -------------------------------------------------------------------------------