Re: arch/i386/boot rewrite, and all the hard-coded video cards

[Vlad <vladc6@yahoo.com>]

--- Rene Herman <rene.herman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/02/2007 12:41 AM, Vlad wrote:
> 
> > H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
> >> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
> >> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
> >> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
> >> following question...
> >>
> >> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
> > 
> > Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful
> for
> > forensic purposes and recovering important data. I've personally
> had
> > to do this many times, and I'm sure others have as well.
> > 
> > Booting is such a critical process that a user would be completely
> > lost as to why it fails, especially if they can't see any output
> on
> > the screen. I think it would be a shame to prevent Linux from
> running
> > on these machines.
> 
> He wasn't asking about doing away with all video output on 386/486s,
> but 
> with special Super VGA adapter specific modes. You'd have normal VGA
> 
> available as always, and VESA if the videocard supports it (which
> all cards 
> that _can_ do more than 80x25 do).

Oh, OK. Thanks for clarifying this for me.

Vlad

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