#260 ROM BIOS images larger than 64KB
Here's a suggestion that I'm kind of surprised just hasn't
found it's way into Bochs yet. I love Bochs, it's a great
tool. I hope that this suggestion could be implemented if
not in v2.1, then in v2.2.
Over the years, I have upgraded my motherboard BIOS
via flash upgrades. As a result, I keep old BIOS .bin
files around. I have the latest .bin file for my
motherboard's BIOS, an Award BIOS. As you may know,
many BIOS' are larger than 64K today; in fact, the
Award BIOS for my ABIT BX6R2 mobo is 256K. While the
BIOS packaged with Bochs I'm sure is fine and works, I'd
be real interested in testing my code with an "actual"
BIOS, perhaps the very same one used with my PC. But
it seems that Bochs has a limitation on the size of the
BIOS.
I propose that either you allow BIOS' larger than 64K to
be used, or provide a *.bxrc file option that not only
allows you to specify the ROMBIOS image file, but the
ROM BIOS size as well. If you think that you may not
implement this for a while, could someone please tell me
whether a workaround would be possible (e.g. writing
a "mock" BIOS that bochs would load that copies the
Award BIOS into memory at the bochs BIOS starting
address and jump to execution??)?
Respectfully Submitted...
~ Craig
Logged In: NO
[UPDATE]
I saw in the Patches section that cbothamy has created a
patch so thot Bochs will accept a BIOS ROM image up to 1MB
in size. Why not make this a standard part of the Bochs
release??
Respectfully submitted,
~ Craig
Logged In: YES
user_id=376477
The Bochs BIOS already can be larger than 64k. I haven't
found a size check in the code. We don't recommend to use
BIOS files from real hardware since a BIOS heavily depends
on the installed chipset.