[Etherboot-developers] Seperating out the x86 BIOS calls...
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From: Eric W B. <ebi...@ln...> - 2002-07-17 05:23:58
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O.k. I just took a moment to skim the code to see what it would really take to seperate out the x86 bios calls. And all it requires is to have a seperate stack for 16bit calls. There may be some loader issues as well, I have not looked at that in detail. I would probably add a table of function pointers, as well so that the address of the 16bit code does not need to be known at compile time. For the PXE case that is a significant consideration. Regarding the loader, I am starting to seperate out the decompressor from the rest of the code, so I can use the decompressor when booted under LinuxBIOS. Saving 6 out of 17k is pretty significant in my book. What I am aiming at is an inplace (or at least in bss) decompressor that runs in 32bit mode. If that works we can permanently move the decompressor out of loader.S and possibly make that file readable, instead of #ifdef spagetti. Eric |