New video BIOS for bhyve

[Robert Crowston]

Fantastic!

> Instead, I added support for PCI Expansion ROMs

This was one of the limitation that prevents GPU pass through from working, so this is also a big step forwards.

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 11:02, Henrik Gulbrandsen <henrik at gulbra.net> wrote:

> In the last few months, I have been extending the video support in bhyve
> to allow booting from live ISO images, which sometimes lack UEFI
> loaders.
> There was already a video BIOS with dormant support for VGA, but I could
> not use that, because the X11 int10 module runs a real-mode x86 emulator
> that aborts when it tries to enter the C code running in protected mode.
>
> Instead, I added support for PCI Expansion ROMs to bhyve and wrote a new
> SVGA video BIOS from scratch in 8086 assembly code. The current features
> include VGA modes 3 and 12h, 24-bit and 32-bit VESA modes from 640x480
> to
> 1920x1200, and enough BIOS functions to boot a typical Linux desktop.
>
> At this point, I think it's good enough for a preliminary release, so if
> you are interested, you will find all patch files at the following URL:
>
> https://www.gulbra.net/freebsd-bhyve/
>
> My apologies for the 15-year-old web layout, which will probably break
> horribly on modern smartphones. Also, I hope I have not duplicated the
> work of someone else. I didn't want to announce this before it worked.
>
> /Henrik
>
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