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Matrox & Asus Being Jerks! P4C800-E Dlx + P650/P750 Fails During Boot!
Ummm. let's bring some facts to the discission, Ron claims to have written
BIOS'es but fails to materialize the easy-to-understand explanation anyone who had, would be able to provide. You see, Ron, things that you know about are trivialized.. you don't need to act high and mighty to be able to explain what is the essense of things. Let's talk about IBM PC compatible BIOS. The interface to this BIOS is mostly interrupt 0x21, which is used to call code which resides in the read-only ROM memory in the so-called BIOS. This code is executed on x86 compatible processor by the x86 compatible processor, which is not a very hard thing to grasp.. what the BIOS contains, is x86 compatible binary code, obviously. This code is instructions to the motherboard and other components the BIOS supports (such as IDE, SATA, etc. controllers, whatever the MB supports that is within the scope of the IBM PC compatible BIOS...), this allows the common feature set to be commanded through standard interface. This was more relevant years ago, novadays Operating Systems such as Windows, Linux and others do most of the tasks with device drivers 'natively'-- so the BIOS could be a lot simpler novadays, just pass the control to the OS bootstrap and let it do the rest. This is much more efficient, because BIOS is implemented using Real Mode and modern x86 OS runs in Protected Mode. Calls to the BIOS have to be done using API such as DPMI, which is not very efficient. It is far more efficient to do the I/O directly from the Protected Mode. Ofcourse different OS take different approach, Windows just allows drivers to write into memory where they want with full privileges which sometimes causes some instability with poorly written drivers. ;-) ;-) I'm assuming the reader knows what Protection Level and Ring 0 means so I won't insult anyone with excess babbling about how the privilege levels work. Interesting that adults find it more productive to argue who's right and who's wrong without any mentioning how the BIOS on IBM PC compatibles is supposed to be working. Disclaimer: I might have made error or two, tough ****, because haven't done any "BIOS" level programming for 10 years or so, Windows, BeOS, Linux, BSD and others kind of made it a Solved Problem. IBM PC compatible BIOS is not very interesting technically, never were, IMHO. It was the MS-DOS programmers who had to deal with the BIOS most. Those times are long past. Maybe someone somewhere is writing this embedded system controller/application/widget, who knows.. good for you whoever you may be! |
#2
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"Rapu Rapala" wrote in message ... Ummm. let's bring some facts to the discission, Ron claims to have written BIOS'es but fails to materialize the easy-to-understand explanation anyone who had, would be able to provide. You see, Ron, things that you know about are trivialized.. you don't need to act high and mighty to be able to explain what is the essense of things. Let's talk about IBM PC compatible BIOS. The interface to this BIOS is mostly interrupt 0x21, which is used to call code which resides in the read-only ROM memory in the so-called BIOS. This code is executed on x86 compatible processor by the x86 compatible processor, which is not a very hard thing to grasp.. what the BIOS contains, is x86 compatible binary code, obviously. This code is instructions to the motherboard and other components the BIOS supports (such as IDE, SATA, etc. controllers, whatever the MB supports that is within the scope of the IBM PC compatible BIOS...), this allows the common feature set to be commanded through standard interface. This was more relevant years ago, novadays Operating Systems such as Windows, Linux and others do most of the tasks with device drivers 'natively'-- so the BIOS could be a lot simpler novadays, just pass the control to the OS bootstrap and let it do the rest. This is much more efficient, because BIOS is implemented using Real Mode and modern x86 OS runs in Protected Mode. Calls to the BIOS have to be done using API such as DPMI, which is not very efficient. It is far more efficient to do the I/O directly from the Protected Mode. Ofcourse different OS take different approach, Windows just allows drivers to write into memory where they want with full privileges which sometimes causes some instability with poorly written drivers. ;-) ;-) I'm assuming the reader knows what Protection Level and Ring 0 means so I won't insult anyone with excess babbling about how the privilege levels work. Interesting that adults find it more productive to argue who's right and who's wrong without any mentioning how the BIOS on IBM PC compatibles is supposed to be working. Disclaimer: I might have made error or two, tough ****, because haven't done any "BIOS" level programming for 10 years or so, Windows, BeOS, Linux, BSD and others kind of made it a Solved Problem. IBM PC compatible BIOS is not very interesting technically, never were, IMHO. It was the MS-DOS programmers who had to deal with the BIOS most. Those times are long past. Maybe someone somewhere is writing this embedded system controller/application/widget, who knows.. good for you whoever you may be! HUH, again. This thread is about what happens during boot. This thread is about BIOSs and about what a display card's BIOS does especially during boot. Read the whole thread and get a clue. |
#3
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"johns" wrote in message ... You are about to get down a real rat-hole with the ATI cards. They run well on certain hardware, but not on others !!!!!!!!!! I'm not kidding at all. I wonder why there is not a hardware compatibility list somewhere? Don't put ATIs on the VIA chipset !!! Don't put anything on VIA chipsetsg. |
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