I am working on converting an UGA driver to a generic one, sort of.
I have the binary and the sources of a driver for Cirrus Logic 5430.

I changed the vendor ID and device ID and loaded it in vmware.
Since the CRTC and Sequencer settings are rather specific to this adapter, it only shows me some distorted image in vmware.

I sought some info on this topic on google and found a few things, nothing very detailed.

What I need to do is to change the modes in CirrusLogicUGADraw.c to something more generic ( talking about the CRTC and the Sequencer settings for those modes). Having something like a 800x600x24bit at 60hz would be great.

Can someone help me with that, please?
Thanks.

UGA? never heard of that...
this is what wikipedia says(and only this)


so should this really be developed for?

This is for a project I'm working on and yes, it should be.

I found the required information and I'll try to modify it so that it works on other video adapters.
This is a classical UGA driver, it doesn't use a display adapater which has an EFI option ROM, it uses a regular BIOS VGA display adapter.

Just google for AMI APTIO UGA VESA and you can find more information.
Creating an UGA VESA driver would be great.

you know of anywhere to find UGA info? that short thing above is all I could find about UGA in general...

Of course I do, here are some presentations from INTEL:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/WHP/1.0/WXP/EN-US/WH02_Driver04.exe
http://download.intel.com/technology/efi/docs/EFI95uga.zip
http://download.intel.com/technology/efi/docs/efi49uga.zip
http://download.intel.com/technology/efi/docs/pdfs/uga_idf_final_rev2.pdf

I kind of figured that driver out: what it needs is a rewrite so that it uses VESA 1/2/3 and that's about it.

Here's my explanation of UGA: it is meant to be a replacement for the VGA standard.However, this VGA standard will "die" together with BIOS and it means EFI will replace it. The problem is that any kind of development that I do atm is rather useless without such a driver.

This might also be helpful to those who like to write some OSes, an EFI shell (EFI on top of BIOS - this is how we would use that generic UGA-VESA driver) enables us to mess easily with it.

The EFI apps and drivers are written in CLEAN standard C, that means it can be easily extended.

Waiting to see if someone is willing to help me out with this one.

I can not see EFI happening, that because with EFI you have a basic OS, with its own tcp/ip stack etc.
Once you add a web browser, than the cats out of the bag, as far as M$ dominion is concerned.

Note i not saying there will be no EFI, but i think it will bellow 10% .

Why would that be a problem to Microsoft? You still wouldn't have 3d-acceleration etc., and drivers would probably be pretty basic.

So you'd have something even less functional than linux or Mac OS X, and those still don't pose too big a threat to windows.

If you had a OS with built in drivers and tcp/ip stack, a web browser, email, IM, a sys that can read/write delete, move files on a fat32 file sys, plus usb drivers, plus can boot very fast and play all music and DVD, that comes with every PC.
And you say its not a threat to M$.
On top of this M$, will be full of DRM stuff, which makes there OS a pain.
Co will code APP, to run on top of EFI, giving more functionality to it.

The only part where linux isn't included in this would be "comes with every PC" (and do keep in mind that I'm not a big fan of linux). Wouldn't be a big problem piecing together a custom linux "distribution" that did just these things, did them pretty well (ease of use etc), and booted fast.

So, no, I don't see UEFI as a particular threat

@f0dder, Thats why we are asm coders, because we are individuals with our own idea about things.

Dex will put his money on
1. EFI will not replace BIOS.
2. If it does, it will be a threat to M$.

f0dder will put his money on
1. EFI will replace BIOS.
2. But it will not be a threat to M$.

Time will tell who is right .

Doesn't matter what will happen, however, I'd really love to see this driver happening.

One already exists, but it can be found on a 800 USD AMI APTIO development board.

So, is anyone willing to try to help me, please?

Dex4u: the only thing I'm putting my money on is that UEFI isn't and won't be a threat to MS - whether or not it will replace BIOS I'm not gonna guesstimate. (But even if it does, it still won't be a threat).