VESA without the BIOS

eddyb · Post by **eddyb** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:10 am

ok. but for copyright i attach all the doc. the important part is the first, until the INT 10.

Also i have vga regs info's

Copyrighted material removed. DO NOT DO IT AGAIN UNTIL YOU CAN READ LICENSES - Combuster

zaleschiemilgabriel · Post by **zaleschiemilgabriel** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:31 am

What about WSXGA+ ? I'm hopeless of ever seing my OS run at a 1680x1050 resolution using just VGA/VESA...

EDIT: VESA doesn't detect wide screen resolutions on my machine...

Philip · Post by **Philip** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:57 am

who here have their own os working with high screen solution like vesa?

lukem95 · Post by **lukem95** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:01 am

a lot of people do, its really not that hard to do.

there are several options given to you already in this thread:

drop down to realmode and set mode
set mode from bootloader
get the grub VESA patch and do it via grub
v8086 mode
drivers for each chipset

AJ · Post by AJ » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:11 am

Philip wrote:who here have their own os working with high screen solution like vesa?

I do for one - and a console 'driver' which supports 8-32 bit colour graphics modes (drawing bitmap fonts) in any supported res.

I had major problems getting it working in the first place, but most of those problems were due to dodgy multitasking / memory management code - not good if you are running something in v86 as you never know whether your v86 code is buggy or if it's the support code that's causing the crashes.

Once I rewrote my OS (actually a small OS which acts as a second stage boot loader with debug console support), paying particular attention to eliminating all MMU and MT bugs, the v86 and VESA just sorted themselves out. The moral of the story?

Before attempting nice graphics, create a stable base to work on and VBE will be a lot easier to implement.

Cheers,
Adam

Combuster · Post by **Combuster** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:50 am

Documentation on XGA and many other (dated) video cards, can be found in vgadoc. http://home.worldonline.dk/finth/

The rule is pretty much that if your card has 3D accelleration, it's not in there.

Dex · Post by **Dex** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:01 pm

Philip wrote:who here have their own os working with high screen solution like vesa?

Sure it's very easy, you can try our bootably web browser project:
http://dex4u.com/FAB/Fab.zip

Once you make a bootable floppy (eg: click on the selfextracting exe), you will find a kernel32.exe on the disk, also a folder with another kernel32.exe, replace the one in the root dir with the one in the folder, for the highest res avalable from vesa.

PS: FAB = Flat Assembler Browser

lukem95 · Post by **lukem95** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:07 pm

Dex... on that exe it says you cannot distribute it.. just a heads up.

also... i don't know how far dev has got with Fbrowser... but mouse moves, but the browser buttons dont work, and neither does the keyboard

Dex · Post by **Dex** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:33 pm

The message is from winimage, its not the full ver. As for the FAB, we only started the Project about 8 weeks ago, so thats as far as we have got.
The keyboard does work ( if you press caps lock or Num lock you will see ), its just not used yet, also the mouse does not do anything becaues theres no pagers upload yet.
I have code a full TCP/IP stack, but i have not add it to the project.

zaleschiemilgabriel · Post by **zaleschiemilgabriel** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:39 am

Combuster wrote:The rule is pretty much that if your card has 3D accelleration, it's not in there.

Of course! What was I even thinking?

D'oh!

On a happier note, Phoronix announced that NVIDIA might be doing something for the open source community in the near future: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=NjI3NQ

Jeko · Post by **Jeko** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:42 am

Dex wrote:The message is from winimage, its not the full ver. As for the FAB, we only started the Project about 8 weeks ago, so thats as far as we have got.
The keyboard does work ( if you press caps lock or Num lock you will see ), its just not used yet, also the mouse does not do anything becaues theres no pagers upload yet.
I have code a full TCP/IP stack, but i have not add it to the project.

In your browser project, how will you connect to the internet?

Brynet-Inc · Post by **Brynet-Inc** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:50 am

MarkOS wrote:In your browser project, how will you connect to the internet?

I believe he wrote several network card drivers and a DHCP client, that's pretty much enough for cable ISP provider, or a NAT router.

Dex · Post by **Dex** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:20 pm

MarkOS wrote:
Dex wrote:The message is from winimage, its not the full ver. As for the FAB, we only started the Project about 8 weeks ago, so thats as far as we have got.
The keyboard does work ( if you press caps lock or Num lock you will see ), its just not used yet, also the mouse does not do anything becaues theres no pagers upload yet.
I have code a full TCP/IP stack, but i have not add it to the project.
In your browser project, how will you connect to the internet?

Brynet-Inc is right i have code these for my OS, most of whats in FAB is cut down ver's of my OS's code, but you will need one of 3 ethernet cards
RTL8029
RTL8139
3C59X (3Com)
More will be added.
You can use config file loaded at boot time or the DHCP client, if server is available.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 7:21 am

i found out the linear video buffer address is usually at
f000 0000h
writing to memory from this address can put pixel on the screen
so actually in protected mode it's easier to use vesa

lukem95 · Post by **lukem95** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:49 am

LFB depends on what card you have...