console in 1024x768 mode?

[Peter Wemm]

On Saturday 24 June 2006 03:27 pm, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-Jun-24 19:59:39 +0530, Gobbledegeek wrote:
> >I tried putting "options VESA" in kernel but buildkernel said
> >unsupported option.
>
> VESA relies on the kernel being able to call BIOS functions.  The
> bios is i386 so this isn't possible in native amd64.
>
> Running non-standard console resolution means something like KGI.
> This was being worked on some years ago but seems to have died.

The other option, which many amd64 linux's do, is to have the loader set 
up the VESA modes and pass the information through to the console 
driver.  We could do that too because our loader runs in 32 bit mode.  

The other possibility is to do what the X servers do.  They have a 
simple emulator for 8088 real mode instructions (see their "int10" 
module).  They execute the bios code interpretively to do things like 
mode changes etc.  We could do that too.  It shouldn't be hard to write 
something like a userland tool that can change the mode and tell the 
kernel what the new display settings are.  It could even be done as a 
kernel module, but I'm not sure I'd want a software vm86 emulator in 
the default kernel as it tends to be a bit big.

Volunteers, anyone?
-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5