Re: [9fans] replacing 9load

[Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>]

Russ Cox wrote:

> This is way more code than doing vm86, 

quite true. I agree. But ... the code is written. We've tested the 
user-mode and linuxbios-mode code on a boatload (more than a truckload) 
of cards here and it works quite well. It has been tested most recently 
on a PCI-E card and it worked fine.

>though vm86 is gone on amd64,

yep. that's the problem. Well, one of the problems.

> so maybe it's necessary.  I tried doing this years ago with a home-grown
> x86 simulator, and it didn't seem to run fast enough to appease the
> hardware.

what we've seen here is that the x86 emulator is far faster than 
realmode. It's quite fun to watch the emulator bring cards up ... very 
fast. And, bringing multiple cards up is easy.

If we had a user-mode emulator, could we replace the realmode driver?

thanks

ron