On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Jim Paris wrote:
> > Yipes!!! It has been discussed before and no x86 emulator will go into the
> > kernel. Now what I really love to ses is a way to trace threw the bios
> > code so we can write video drivers that don't need the BIOS to work.
>
> If you mean "trace through" as in automatically, well, that's an x86
> emulator. :) If you mean manually, there's a problem, because every
> card is going to be entirely different.
I think he means a BIOS `compiler' instead of an `interpreter' or `emulator'.
I.e. something that generates C code which can be compiled and used to
initialize the card later, without caring about the BIOS.
Some caveats:
- BIOS code frequently uses the timers found in a typical PC-architecture box
- The BIOS code copyright holder may consider this as a `translation' of
his work, i.e. copyright infringement.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
