Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Donny Davies <woodchip@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@××××××××××.org
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Fwd: Re: grub-0.5.97-vga16.patch
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 14:20:27
Message-Id: 20010828202017.PWUE22658.femail4.sdc1.sfba.home.com@there
1 Hi, devs
2
3 Im forwarding this response I got from the author of the grub
4 vga splashimage stuff. Edited for clarity.
5
6 --
7 Woodchip
8
9 ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
10
11 Subject: Re: grub-0.5.97-vga16.patch
12 Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 19:22:22 -0300 (BRST)
13 From: pcpa@×××××××××××××.br
14 To: Donny Davies <woodchip@g.o>
15
16 Cópia Donny Davies <woodchip@g.o>:
17 > Hi!
18
19 Hi Donny
20
21 > Recently our distribution (http://www.gentoo.org - #gentoo on
22 > openprojects) added grub-0.90 to our portage tree. The boot graphic
23 > stuff is I think working well for many people, and I guess we have
24 > you to partially thank for that. Thanks!
25 >
26 :-)
27 >
28 > But the real reason Im mailing you, is when I use it on my notebook PC
29 > (Toshiba Satellite Pro, 4330CDX) I get corruption on the screen
30 > wherever text is supposed to appear.
31 > A couple points.. The splashimage shows up perfectly. I can see our
32 > graphic and it looks very nice. But where there is supposed to be text
33 > like the title= lines, etc, and the ___ | characters (the "box" that
34 > surrounds the menu choices), there is only "snow", like its
35 > somehow getting corrupted. I hope you know what I mean.. I cant
36 > explain it clearer than that.
37
38 Maybe your notebook bios does not have memory reserved for the
39 vga characters, I guess it probably stores the fonts in the graphics
40 memory, and is being overwritten by the splashimage. It may also be a
41 bug in the bios implementation, but I don´t discard a bug in the grub
42 patch (that happens with your bios), when calling the bios interrupt that
43 should return a pointer to the characters.
44 At some time, I was thinking about adding a option for reading a console
45 font file from the unix filesystem, maybe the problem you are describing is
46 good motive to add such option.
47
48 > The video chipset is a Chips & Technologies 65554 PCI video chipset,
49 > which is a nice little 2MB video system with support for 24bit color.
50 >
51 > I have in the past (not any more!) used a bootloader from PowerQuest
52 > (BootMagic) that displayed nice boot graphic.. please dont think Im
53 > saying
54 > your patch is bad, and powerquest is good, Im just saying that I know
55 > it
56 > too had to draw text to the screen (I could supply strings to the
57 > program)
58 > which it displayed inside its fancy bootimage. So I think the problem
59 > is
60 > not with my video chipset, but with some code in grub somewhere.
61 >
62 > Also, the way it comes up now, there is black space on all sides. The
63 > main image is "squished" into the middle of my notebook screen, it
64 > doesnt
65 > take up the whole screen space. The bootlader from PowerQuest took up
66 > the whole screen, so again, I think grub could be improved there too.
67
68 This happens because the grub code, actually, only works in vga 16 colors,
69 and it only runs at 640x480. In my grub TODO list is to add support for
70 VESA modes, that would allow running at any resolution and number of colors.
71
72 > Another point I wanted to make, was that MS Windows splash screens on
73 > my
74 > notebook, also get "squished" into the middle of the screen, leaving
75 > black
76 > space on all sides. Im only telling you this in hopes that it will
77 > be useful to you for debugging. Maybe this information is good for you to
78 > consider, maybe you dont care about windows or powerquest, thats fine
79 > with me!
80
81 I know about what you is talking, and it is a very useful information,
82 I won´t say I will work on improving grub soon to fix the problems you
83 described, but it is now in my todo list...
84
85 > I would be *very* happy to help you in any way possible. I can usually be
86 > found in #gentoo on openprojects.net, with the nickname "woodchip". If yuo
87 > want to get together, and see if we can debug the issue, I will certainly
88 > help you. However I am not a master with debugging tools like gdb
89 > and stuff, so it might be a little slowgoing.
90
91 gdb won´t help in debugging grub, you probably better with the
92 printf/getkey functions in grub...
93
94 > The "squished" thing might not be a big priority to you, and thats
95 > also fine by me, but I think that the "corruption where text should be" is
96 > a good thing to work on, because other people will likely have the same
97 > problem, not just myself.
98
99 If you wish to work on grub, and has some priority on it, I suggest
100 writting code to load console fonts from the filesystem (or compile a static
101 copy of the vga fonts in grub). Also, if you are going to look at it, I
102 believe there is a problem with the interrupt for blinking the cursor. I
103 think it is required C functions to disable/enable cursor blinking, as I
104 think this is the cause of some screen corruptions that may happen when doing
105 some long operation, like loading the kernel or initrd, or just installing
106 grub in the partition.
107
108 > --
109 > Cheers, and have a great day!
110 > Donny
111
112 Paulo
113
114 -------------------------------------------------------