more on BIOS emu

David Mosberger-Tang (davidm@AZStarNet.com)
Wed, 27 Sep 1995 22:45:56 -0700

I still haven't figured out why the #9 Level 12 doesn't initialize its
clocks properly (recall: the BIOS seems to initialize properly into
80x25 textmode, but trying SVGATextMode or xdm to use anything but the
default clock wreaks havoc). However, I found that if I select the
normal VGA text mode (mode 2) via INT 10 after initializing the card,
everything works fine! Don't understand why, but at least it's
something...

I also added PCI BIOS support to the emulator (both, userlevel and for
MILO). The PCI card that I have now initializes without any
warning/error messages. So if anybody has troubles because of a
missing PCI BIOS, let me know and I'll put the current sources up for
ftp.

So far, the list of working cards is:

----
bus: card type: chip: BIOS version: Note:
---- --------------- ------ --------------------------- -----
ISA #9 GXE Level 12 S3 928 #9GXE BIOS Version 1.13.03S 1
PCI #9 GXE 64 PCI S3 864 #9-864 BIOS Version 1.02.09u
PCI Diamond Stealth 64 S3 ??? ????????? 2

Notes:
------
#1: Requires selecting video mode 2 after initializing BIOS in
order to get clocks programmed correctly.
#2: Reported by pgwduane@mail.atnet.net.
----

Not very long yet, but the fact that the Diamond Stealth worked out of
the box is quite encouraging (I think the Stealth uses either an S3
864 or 964, so its BIOS may be very similar to the #9 GXE 64 PCI).
But in any case, if you have any additions, by all means let me know!

Enjoy,
--david