[vbox-dev] What prevents from using a different BIOS ?
Huihong Luo
huisinro at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 24 04:19:29 GMT 2010
Nikolay,
Thanks, I will take a look of the EFI code.
Another option to introduce BIOS code is to insert a device with expansion ROM, the code will get called when doing self test. But I am not sure if current BIOS supports this.
The clean solution is to extend current BIOS, I will try to explorer if possible to use a different bios from other projects. VBox bios came from Bochs. The Bochs has an updated version, which added some 32-bit init code, for PCI devices.
will report back in a few weeks.
- huihong
--- On Wed, 6/23/10, Nikolay Igotti <Nikolay.Igotti at Sun.COM> wrote:
From: Nikolay Igotti <Nikolay.Igotti at Sun.COM>
Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] What prevents from using a different BIOS ?
To: "Huihong Luo" <huisinro at yahoo.com>
Cc: vbox-dev at virtualbox.org, "Alexey Eremenko" <al4321 at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 12:45 AM
Huihong,
Maybe you can use EFI then? It is modularized (while not very well
engineered, IMO), and have some USB support.
Nikolay
Huihong Luo пишет:
> thanks for the pointer.
> We also have some usb code from our boot loader can be used.
> The problem with current vbox bios code, all code is in the single
> huge file (rombios.c). In order to support usb, we need some modulized
> clock and pci code. Clock timers are needed for scheduling usb frames.
>
> --- On *Tue, 6/22/10, Alexey Eremenko /<al4321 at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>
> From: Alexey Eremenko <al4321 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] What prevents from using a different BIOS ?
> To: vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
> Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 3:30 PM
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Huihong Luo <huisinro at yahoo.com
> <http://us.mc343.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=huisinro@yahoo.com>>
> wrote:
> >
> > I am trying to extend the vbox BIOS module to support USB
> devices, and flash drive boot.
> >
> > The current BIOS is 64k in size, what is the consequency if we
> increase the size to 128K? the usb code is rather large, 64k won't
> hold it.
> >
> > Or, perhaps a better way, is to replace the whole bios code. Is
> there anything specific to vbox that makes this not to work? if
> not, is it going to be really difficult to port another BIOS to
> use with vbox?
> >
> > The current bios code is monolithic, not easy to extend.
> >
>
> Before you write any such thing, please take a look at SeaBIOS here:
> http://www.coreboot.org/SeaBIOS
>
> It seems this BIOS supports USB disk boot, and it was ported to
> run on Qemu.
> NOTE: I have not tried it, so I don't know about any potential
> problems.
>
> The big problem of changing BIOS, is that we must ensure *everything*
> works with all guest OSes, which is not easy.
>
> --
> -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"
>
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