vesa with Bochs

[xyjamepa]

Hi,

how do you support vesa in Bochs?
what should I add in bochsrc.txt to support vesa?

Thanx.

[f2]

Verify that you have these lines in bochsrc.txt :

Code: Select all

vgaromimage: file=$BXSHARE/VGABIOS-lgpl-latest
vga: extension=vbe

But VESA emulation is quite slow in Bochs. Try QEmu.

[Combuster]

Bochs may be slow (independent of vesa), but it has far less issues than Qemu and it comes with a very good debugger

[f2]

Bochs may be slow (independent of vesa), but it has far less issues than Qemu and it comes with a very good debugger

I agree with you: Bochs and QEmu each have qualities. I use both (as well as Virtual PC) to test my OS.

[gedd]

Virtual Box is pretty good too. Part of Qemu are inclued
The version 3 beta 2 is stable (as a beta version can be)
There is a SDK wich is may be used to debug, but the steb mode is very poorly documented

[clange]

VirtualBox is extremely slow with graphics - at least the BGA implementation. I get a few frames per second and you can see the (slow) update of the display. This is about the same speed as Bochs! Running in Qemu I get around 250 frames per second.

clange

P.S. I calculate the frame rate by using RDTSC to check how long it takes to generate the frame and how much time it takes to blit the frame to display. The FPS's mentioned above is when running on a 3.2 GHz P4.

[gedd]

yes, but bochs is more in general performance but usefull for debug
I'm using a Core 2 Quad (so VT instruction) and the difference is here but not so visible

VMWare has very good performance but not free.
An alternative is to use VMWare Player, but you had to change manualy config file and you cannot create VM.

[f2]

VMWare has very good performance but not free.
An alternative is to use VMWare Player, but you had to change manualy config file and you cannot create VM.

WMWare Server is now free ! You can download it here.

[gedd]

Yes i know that but it is a bit too heavy.
The discussion was about desktop product that are more light than a server.

If you have a second machine you can use VMware GSXi server or Hyper-v, both free
GSXi works on very few configuration, dell, HP specific server
Hyper-v work everywhere but need at lest a professional Windows version in order to make works his client
(client need a domain connexion ...)

Xen server is also a good alternative, client run well but VM machine configuration is limited.