pc386 hello.exe on real hardware (issues with VGA/VBE output)

[Karel Gardas]

Hi,

while testing pc386 BSP to write some verified information bits into the
manual I've hit very simple issue. I'm not able to run hello.exe on real
hardware PC w/o UART1 presented/connected and get its expected "Hello"
output to the VGA/GPU console. I think RTEMS still pushed hello message
down to the UART1.

What I have tried is:

One of: --video=auto/--video=1440x900/--video=1280x800/--video=off
parameteres in combination with nothing or --console=/dev/vgacons

RTEMS boots well (using builtin NIC pxe loading ipxe loading manually
hello.exe from tftp server), but what I see only are messages from
FB_VESA_RM (2 or 3 lines depending on --video param) and then:

ELCR Found.  ISA IRQas prohrammed as:
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
  E E E E E E E E E E E  L  E  E  E  E
PCI bus: using PCI BIOS interface
Legacy UART Ports: COM1-COM4

and that's all.

I'm curious why even --video=off --console=/dev/vgacons is not working.

Does anybody have any experience with output on PC console with recent
RTEMS? By recent I mean I'm testing 5.1.rc2 here...

BTW: hardware tested is lenovo thinkpad t400 and lenovo thinkpad t500 so
far. Attempt to boot on more modern hardware failed on UEFI PXE boot
which is probably not supported by RTEMS .exe binary at all. -- my
assumption based on what x86_64 BSP needs to do in order to boot on
UEFI. Please correct if I'm wrong, uefi pxe was tested on asrock b450 so
far only...

Thanks!
Karel