4 ms·

Does this rom fix the book8088 being randomly off by a column in text mode?

by ok123456 3y ago

LukeShu 3y ago
The stock book8088 BIOS is a ripoff (GPL violation) of this. IDK about that bug though.
- bdowling 3y ago
  Didn't they notify buyers of the open source bios and share the code if a buyer wanted it? That may be enough to satisfy the GPL.
  - LukeShu 3y ago
    IDK what notices they provide, but: The copyright statement that prints on boot and indicates that it is licensed under the GPL has been stripped, violating section 4 and 5.d (now claims to be "Copyright (C) 2022 CYCLE Logic" with no mention of "Copyright (C) 2010 - 2020 Sergey Kiselev", and with no mention of the GPL). If you do request the source code from them, to their credit they do give it to you, but they code the give you has all (edit: most) of the copyright header-comments removed (violation of section 5.b). And generally, in neither the binary nor the source code indicate that it's based on book8088 (violation of section 5.a).
    - snvzz 3y ago
      That's so silly. They'd definitely sell more, not less, of these book8088s if they credited the bios and used upstream's source. Particularly now that upstream directly supports the device.
  - rasz 3y ago
    No :) Its Chinese open source, Bunnie calls it Gongkai https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 You copy, rip out attribution, add some optional modifications and sell it as your own.
  - ok123456 3y ago
    When you buy it they send you an archive that has the schematics for the machine, and a zip file that contains the source code to the rom with whatever modifications they made.
userbinator 3y ago
Could you explain that in a little more detail? That sounds like it could be a hardware bug.
- mlyle 3y ago
  I believe it's from the LCD panel auto-syncing improperly / choosing the wrong horizontal porch. I'm not sure the BIOS can help much.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    In that case I think any firmware fix would need to be in the VBIOS.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      There's no real vbios. There's a CGA chip (6845), with pretty limited registers to adjust timings (and a lot of software out there that expects to set these directly or for line timings and frame timings to be precisely known values). The clock rate is fixed. The scan converter in panels often guesses "wrong" about modes. If one could change the firmware for it, that would help.

Does this rom fix the book8088 being randomly off by a column in text mode?

LukeShu 3y ago

The stock book8088 BIOS is a ripoff (GPL violation) of this. IDK about that bug though.

bdowling 3y ago
Didn't they notify buyers of the open source bios and share the code if a buyer wanted it? That may be enough to satisfy the GPL.
- LukeShu 3y ago
  IDK what notices they provide, but: The copyright statement that prints on boot and indicates that it is licensed under the GPL has been stripped, violating section 4 and 5.d (now claims to be "Copyright (C) 2022 CYCLE Logic" with no mention of "Copyright (C) 2010 - 2020 Sergey Kiselev", and with no mention of the GPL). If you do request the source code from them, to their credit they do give it to you, but they code the give you has all (edit: most) of the copyright header-comments removed (violation of section 5.b). And generally, in neither the binary nor the source code indicate that it's based on book8088 (violation of section 5.a).
  - snvzz 3y ago
    That's so silly. They'd definitely sell more, not less, of these book8088s if they credited the bios and used upstream's source. Particularly now that upstream directly supports the device.
- rasz 3y ago
  No :) Its Chinese open source, Bunnie calls it Gongkai https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 You copy, rip out attribution, add some optional modifications and sell it as your own.
- ok123456 3y ago
  When you buy it they send you an archive that has the schematics for the machine, and a zip file that contains the source code to the rom with whatever modifications they made.

userbinator 3y ago

Could you explain that in a little more detail? That sounds like it could be a hardware bug.

mlyle 3y ago
I believe it's from the LCD panel auto-syncing improperly / choosing the wrong horizontal porch. I'm not sure the BIOS can help much.
- userbinator 3y ago
  In that case I think any firmware fix would need to be in the VBIOS.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    There's no real vbios. There's a CGA chip (6845), with pretty limited registers to adjust timings (and a lot of software out there that expects to set these directly or for line timings and frame timings to be precisely known values). The clock rate is fixed. The scan converter in panels often guesses "wrong" about modes. If one could change the firmware for it, that would help.