New video BIOS for bhyve

[Rodney W. Grimes]

> On 7/19/19 3:02 AM, Henrik Gulbrandsen 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.
> 
> This is pretty impressive work!  Would you be able to post these patches to
> a public repository, e.g. on github or gitlab or some such?  That would
> really help with review and allow others to assist with the work as well.

I let this fall through my cracks as well while busy with
other things.  I too would like to see this work moved
forward.  I see that your patches are against an 11.3
system, and can appreciate that not everone has resources
to run -head, how can we assist in getting these patches
moved forward to head?

Regards,
-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org