Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU Video Driver for Win NT-based systems

[Grzegorz Kulewski]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Fabrice Bellard wrote:
> Why not using the main graphic card ? dosemu does it... All you need is 
> "just" to be able to switch the rendering contexts. So it is a host VGA 
> card dependent code, but it can be rather small.

I want to be able to play games in it!!! ;-)
That means: I am thinking about using as a second card some really good 3d 
accelerator on pci bus (or on agp if first card is on pci). And that card 
can not be used by two operating systems at the same time because of some 
uninterruptable mutualy exclusive operations such as transferring big 
texture from system memory to video card memory. It can take very long and 
graphic card can not do anything other until it finishes. So host will not 
be able to display anything in that time! And we have no method to tell 
host system: stop using that card for 10ms. And there will be problems 
with irq routing probably. Think that this card is driven by some closed 
source binary drivers and you have no specs available. When using second 
card host system kernel does not touch it at all. But we will need 
"screenshot" of it from time to time. This can be achieved in two ways:

1. Use guest program that will make screenshot and tell qemu where in 
memmory it resides or will send it in any other way.

2. qemu will wait until card is free (it can be probably easily checked by 
some io port sequence) then will stop emulation and will copy screenshot.

I hope it all can be done! :-)
And hope somebody else will do it! :-)


Grzegorz Kulewski


> Grzegorz Kulewski wrote:
> > Another idea is to allow qemu use second graphic card in your pc (not used 
> > by the host). I have one spare GeForce 2 @ PCI so I will be glad to see 
> > this implemented. Before that we will probably need working PCI layer in 
> > qemu. And I we can track the area in graphic memory used by current screen 
> > maybe it is possible to write driver that will copy screen from second 
> > card to a window on first (this could be implemented on guest or on host).
> > 
> > 
> > Grzegorz Kulewski
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, 12 May 2004, Natalia Portillo wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>This is the same as making a DirectDraw (2D part of DirectX) driver.
> >>
> >>A full DirectX package of drivers will be great: DirectDraw (for 2D), 
> >>Direct3D (converting calls to OpenGL in host), DirectSound/DirectSound3D 
> >>and DirectMusic (for the sound card), and DirectInput (keyboards, mice, 
> >>joysticks)...
> >>
> >>On Wed, 12 May 2004 12:30:08 +0100
> >>"Jamie Burns" <address@hidden> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Wouldn't a 2D accelerator be a good idea first? ;o)
> >>>
> >>>If Windows asks for a "line" to be drawn, or a "blit-op" then could that be
> >>>passed through to the QEMU emulated video hardware, which in turn could
> >>>simply get SDL or whatever to do the required operation. Then 2D graphics
> >>>would speed up immensly.
> >>>
> >>>Are there any documents giving an overview of how the QEUM architecture
> >>>works in this respect? I would work on a driver in my spare time but really
> >>>do not know where to start.
> >>>
> >>>J.
> >>>
> >>>----- Original Message ----- 
> >>>From: "Grzegorz Kulewski" <address@hidden>
> >>>To: <address@hidden>
> >>>Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 11:20 AM
> >>>Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU Video Driver for Win NT-based systems
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>On Wed, 12 May 2004, Filip Navara wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>>if anyone is interested I have created open source QEMU/Bochs video
> >>>>>>>driver for Windows NT/2K/XP/2003.
> >>>>>>>Binaries - www.volny.cz/xnavara/qemuvid_bin.zip
> >>>>>>>Sources - www.volny.cz/xnavara/qemuvid_src.zip
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>Are these VBE drivers?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Not in the sense of VBE 3.0 specification. I have such driver too, but
> >>>>>it propably works only on ReactOS because of using undocumented API.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>Can you describe the drivers and its capabilities in more details?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>The driver uses the Bochs/QEMU VBE I/O port, the same method as used by
> >>>>>BXVGA. My implementation is a bit simplier, but still with the same
> >>>>>features. It also uses the Linear FrameBuffer feature of the Bochs/QEMU
> >>>>>interface that wasn't available at the time when BXVGA was written.
> >>>>
> >>>>Are there any driver that works with win9x? Can you port your (or write
> >>>>it from scratch)?
> >>>>
> >>>>Will your driver work in Bochs?
> >>>>
> >>>>Is it possible to create driver that emulates DirectX and OpenGL by
> >>>>sending the OpenGL commands to the host OpenGL libs. DirectX commands
> >>>>should probably be converted before into OpenGL.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Thanks for your work,
> >>>>
> >>>>Grzegorz Kulewski
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>Qemu-devel mailing list
> >>>>address@hidden
> >>>>http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
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> >>>http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
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> >>
> > 
> > 
> > 
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