[gPXE] Machines hangs when exiting from CLI

[Itay Gazit]

Joshua,

Are you sure we can't find a fix for those problematic BIOSes which can't
continue after returning from protected mode?

As you said expansion cards use this to provide a configuration menu prompt.
This is exactly what I am willing to use gPXE, add CLI options to configure
the card/gPXE.

Do you happen to have gPXE assembly reference code on how to call real mode
C functions? I would like to start dealing with it!



Thanks,



Itay


On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 1:14 AM, Jonathan Andrews <jon at jonshouse.co.uk>wrote:

>  On Wed, 2010-03-31 at 17:00 -0400, Joshua Oreman wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Jonathan Andrews
> <jon at jonshouse.co.uk> wrote:
> > > Excuse my ignorance .... I don't see HOW you would enter a CLI
> before
> > > POST. When I was programming against BIOS 20 years ago the "feature
> ROM"
> > > hook was not activated until after POST. Before POST interrupts
> where
> > > disabled - IRQ 1 (keyboard) and INT10(video)where simply not
> available,
> > > INT10H video hook was only active as the last stage in POST.  In
> short
> > > pre-POST is zero video, zero keybaord as far as I know ?
> >
> > No one's doing anything before POST; this is during POST.
> >
> > Option ROMs have an "init" routine that is executed during POST. Its
> > main job is to hook other interrupts so the work the ROM actually
> > wants to provide (e.g. an additional hard disk or a network boot) can
> > be executed after POST, but it's also possible to do things directly
> > at that time. Some expansion cards use this to provide a configuration
> > menu prompt.
> >
> I was always told the initial call was simply to allow the feature ROM
> to participate in POST itself and if unused should just be a RET ? The
> order of POST is not fixed - the list of tasks is similar but can you
> can say little about the machine other than its has "some RAM" at this
> point ? In the AT/286 days that was all that could be said here.
>
> Cheers,
> Jon
>
>
>
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