From: zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim) Subject: Re: How to switch back to VGA-text from SVGA-text mode??? Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1993 21:24:56 GMT
In article <1993Mar27.104511.16064@wam.umd.edu> spierce@wam.umd.edu (Stephen Pierce) writes:
> Something else: Why not use VM8086 mode? Then the bios runs under
>a 8086 in real mode (essentially) and it can do it's work. Then Linux
>can determine (?) what the BIOS did, or somehow allow the changes to
>stick. Please foregive my simple language, I am not a VM p[rogrammer
>but I do know about the different modes of the 386...
This is exactly the problem! People who know how to do it won't. It is not
enough to be running in VM86 mode. The BIOS is accessed via interrupts and
these are handled in protected mode. You need a mechanism for reflecting the
interrupts to use the real-mode interrupt vectors.
The 386 gurus have a thing about not supporting access to the BIOS on the
grounds that is slow, too DOS-like, etc.
> Comments?
>
>Steve
>
>