1 Dec
2004
1 Dec
'04
9:09 a.m.
From: Alex Ionescu
There's also the problem with text-mode and the video in general, imo.
I think there are only 3 places where we use text-mode: FreeLdr, HAL and
blue.sys. I've already adapted FreeLdr to simulate text-mode in
graphics-mode (i.e. there is a routine which takes a char and an attribute,
that routine looks up the char in a font table and sets the correct pixels
in the frame buffer). Same could be used in HAL. To keep the code clean I'll
probably write a Xbox specific version of blue.sys based on the same
principle.
The game plan for graphics mode is to first start using framebuf.dll and a
custom video miniport driver. I see no problems there. It would be nice to
be able to use the Windows nVidia driver later on. There are a few problems
with that (driver will probably look for specific PCI vendor/device ids,
might try to call INT10, might try to scan the video BIOS) but we'll cross
that bridge when we get there.
In general, right now I'm just following the execution flow of the kernel
and when I hit a problem I try to solve it, one problem at a time. I still
have good hope that it won't be necessary to put Xbox specific code in the
kernel, but I'm not 100% sure about that. But, in the spirits of the
beginnings of ReactOS (lots of talk but no code for FreeWin95 --> emphasis
on writing code for ReactOS) it's enough to have a general feel for the
direction we want to move in and start writing code.
Gé van Geldorp.