[OpenBIOS] Hi.

[9732520 at lewis.sms.ed.ac.uk]

I just subscribed a couple of days ago and was trawling through the recent 
messages and a couple of things came to mind:

1) Any 32-bit OS cannot use int's below 0x1f for their own use.  That is why the 
BIOS is not used (apart from the fact it isn't 32-bit).  In protected mode, these 
interrupts are used or reserved by Intel to signal various exceptions such as FPU 
overflows or page faults etc.  So any BIOS that was to be used by these OS's would 
have to use int's above 0x20 or another call method like fixed addresses for entry 
to functions. (which may just be a call to the actual location) and also keep the 
interrupt controllers out of these int numbers.

2) I assume 32-bit code is used as much as possible, ie. start up in real mode and 
switch to protected mode asap. and then deal with all the rest.  It doesn't make 
much difference for boot really, but functions used by OS's should really be 
32-bit now (name one *decent* real mode 16-bit OS).

Otherwise, the project looks interested and may be of some use.
Mark Scott
marks at dai.ed.ac.uk
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
God is real unless declared integer

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