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   HP van Braam (hp@mastodon.tmm.cx)'s status on Sunday, 07-Dec-2025 02:40:50 JST HP van Braam

   in reply to

   Also note in the above screenshot that the "Award Modular BIOS" screen does not have the normal logo. But there's still SPACE for a logo.

   The fact that the #sunpci did not show the Award logo bothered me from the start.

   The reason for this is obvious now. The "Fake text mode" that the SunPCi application implements simply doesn't have support for the weird mixed text/graphics mode that the BIOS wants to use!

   #retrocomputing

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     HP van Braam (hp@mastodon.tmm.cx)'s status on Sunday, 07-Dec-2025 02:40:52 JST HP van Braam

     I spend a bit of time dissecting the #sunpci driver in #ghidra. And I can now boot the SunPCi from my own code! Using the #solaris driver still.

     Some terrifying conclusions:

     The windowed output in the SunPCi userspace application comes from repeatedly read()ing the /dev/sunpcidrv0 node. That just returns some raw video data and mode information.

     Userspace contains a VGA emulator itself. Whenever it doesn't understand something it just switches to the external VGA.

     #retrocomputing