[Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 5/6] vga: add some optional CGA compatibility hacks

[Matthew Ogilvie]

This patch adds some optional compatibility hacks (default
disabled) to allow Microport UNIX to function under qemu.

I've tried to structure it to be easy to add more hacks for other
old CGA programs, if anyone ever needs them.

Microport UNIX System V/386 v 2.1 (ca 1987) tries to program
the CGA registers directly with neither the assistance of BIOS, nor
with proper handling of EGA/VGA-only registers.  Note that it didn't
work on real VGA hardware, either (although in that case, the most
obvious problems seemed to be out-of-range hsync and/or vsync
signalling, rather than the issues in this patch).

Eventually real MDA and/or CGA support might provide an alternative to
this patch, although a hybrid approach like this patch might still
be useful in marginal cases.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Ogilvie <address@hidden>
---

Note: checkpatches.pl gives an error about initializing the global 
"int vga_cga_hacks = 0;", even though existing lines near it are
doing the same thing.  Should I give precedence to checkpatches.pl, or
nearby code?

Another approach would be to add real MDA and/or CGA support.
Perhaps "-vga mda" and/or "-vga cga" command line options, and
then make a split off hw/mda.c that is much simplified compared to
vga.c.

Note that even if qemu had a real "-vga cga" option, something like
this patch might still be useful to allow running both old/fragile
CGA programs and newer VGA programs in a single virtual machine.
One downside of real CGA is the relatively ugly low-res font
CGA uses (I think) for text mode, not just graphics mode.

Although irrelevant to UNIX, this idea of implementing old graphics
cards could be further extended:
  - "-vga hgc" (Hercules) support would probably be easy to add
    to MDA, after MDA was cleanly separated out.
  - "-vga hgc+cga", (or perhaps "-vga hgc,secondary=cga",
    or something else), to support a dual graphics card
    configurations.  I believe the real hardware supported various
    combinations: "(hgc|mda)\+(cga|std|...)",
    "(cga|std|...)\+(hgc|mda)", "cga\+(std|...)", and "(std|...)\+cga".
    Also, with a PCI bus, two of the same kind of card may be supported
    in some cases.  In such a configuration, I would expect each
    graphics card would have it's own display window in the host OS.
  - Also, in my research about CGA stuff, I noticed that there were
    a few other old rare cards that appear to be minor variations of CGA
    and/or MDA (a combination CGA/HGC, a color HGC, a higher-resolution
    CGA, etc).  Once you had a clean plain-CGA implementation,
    many of these could probably be implemented as optional enable flags
    fairly easily.

Does anyone have any thoughts about the best way of adding MDA, HGC,
CGA, or similar old video cards to qemu?

========================

 hw/pc.h         |  4 ++++
 hw/vga.c        | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 qemu-options.hx | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
 vl.c            | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++
 4 files changed, 77 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/hw/pc.h b/hw/pc.h
index e4db071..37e2f87 100644
--- a/hw/pc.h
+++ b/hw/pc.h
@@ -176,6 +176,10 @@ enum vga_retrace_method {
 
 extern enum vga_retrace_method vga_retrace_method;
 
+#define VGA_CGA_HACK_PALETTE_BLANKING  (1<<0)
+#define VGA_CGA_HACK_FONT_HEIGHT       (1<<1)
+extern int vga_cga_hacks;
+
 static inline DeviceState *isa_vga_init(ISABus *bus)
 {
     ISADevice *dev;
diff --git a/hw/vga.c b/hw/vga.c
index f82ced8..08ec4bd 100644
--- a/hw/vga.c
+++ b/hw/vga.c
@@ -547,14 +547,31 @@ void vga_ioport_write(void *opaque, uint32_t addr, 
uint32_t val)
         printf("vga: write CR%x = 0x%02x\n", s->cr_index, val);
 #endif
         /* handle CR0-7 protection */
-        if ((s->cr[VGA_CRTC_V_SYNC_END] & VGA_CR11_LOCK_CR0_CR7) &&
-            s->cr_index <= VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW) {
-            /* can always write bit 4 of CR7 */
-            if (s->cr_index == VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW) {
-                s->cr[VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW] = (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW] & ~0x10) |
-                    (val & 0x10);
+        if (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_V_SYNC_END] & VGA_CR11_LOCK_CR0_CR7) {
+            if (s->cr_index <= VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW) {
+                /* can always write bit 4 of CR7 */
+                if (s->cr_index == VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW) {
+                    s->cr[VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW] =
+                        (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_OVERFLOW] & ~0x10) | (val & 0x10);
+                }
+                return;
+            } else if ((vga_cga_hacks & VGA_CGA_HACK_FONT_HEIGHT) &&
+                       !(s->sr[VGA_SEQ_CLOCK_MODE] & VGA_SR01_CHAR_CLK_8DOTS)) 
{
+                /* extra CGA compatibility hacks (not in standard VGA) */
+                if (s->cr_index == VGA_CRTC_MAX_SCAN &&
+                    val == 7 &&
+                    (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_MAX_SCAN] & 0xf) == 0xf) {
+                    return;
+                } else if (s->cr_index == VGA_CRTC_CURSOR_START &&
+                           val == 6 &&
+                           (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_MAX_SCAN] & 0xf) == 0xf) {
+                    val = 0xd;
+                } else if (s->cr_index == VGA_CRTC_CURSOR_END &&
+                           val == 7 &&
+                           (s->cr[VGA_CRTC_MAX_SCAN] & 0xf) == 0xf) {
+                    val = 0xe;
+                }
             }
-            return;
         }
         s->cr[s->cr_index] = val;
 
@@ -1886,7 +1906,10 @@ static void vga_update_display(void *opaque)
         /* nothing to do */
     } else {
         full_update = 0;
-        if (!(s->ar_index & 0x20)) {
+        if (!(s->ar_index & 0x20) &&
+            /* extra CGA compatibility hacks (not in standard VGA */
+            (!(vga_cga_hacks & VGA_CGA_HACK_PALETTE_BLANKING) ||
+             (s->ar_index != 0 && s->ar_flip_flop))) {
             graphic_mode = GMODE_BLANK;
         } else {
             graphic_mode = s->gr[VGA_GFX_MISC] & VGA_GR06_GRAPHICS_MODE;
diff --git a/qemu-options.hx b/qemu-options.hx
index 104d228..03e13ec 100644
--- a/qemu-options.hx
+++ b/qemu-options.hx
@@ -975,6 +975,25 @@ Valid optional properties are
 @item retrace=dumb|precise
 Select dumb (default) or precise VGA retrace logic, useful for some
 DOS games/demos.
address@hidden address@hidden@var{hack2},[...]]
+Enable various extra CGA compatibility hacks for programs that are
+trying to directly set CGA modes without BIOS assistance nor
+real knowledge of EGA/VGA.  These might only work with -vga std.
+Valid hacks are
address@hidden @option
address@hidden palette_blanking
+Wait to blank the screen until palette registers seem to actually be
+modified, instead of blanking it as soon as the palette address bit (0x10)
+of the attribute address register (0x3c0) is cleared.
address@hidden font_height
+Ignore attempts to change the VGA font height (index 9),
+cursor start (index 10), and cursor end (index 11) of the CRTC control
+registers (0x3d5) if trying to set them to the default for CGA fonts
+instead of VGA fonts.
address@hidden all
+Enable all CGA hacks.  More CGA hacks may be added in future versions
+of qemu.
address@hidden table
 @end table
 ETEXI
 
diff --git a/vl.c b/vl.c
index febfd62..16d04a2 100644
--- a/vl.c
+++ b/vl.c
@@ -179,6 +179,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
 static const char *data_dir;
 const char *bios_name = NULL;
 enum vga_retrace_method vga_retrace_method = VGA_RETRACE_DUMB;
+int vga_cga_hacks = 0;
 DisplayType display_type = DT_DEFAULT;
 int display_remote = 0;
 const char* keyboard_layout = NULL;
@@ -1748,6 +1749,28 @@ static void select_vgahw (const char *p)
             else if (strstart(opts, "precise", &nextopt))
                 vga_retrace_method = VGA_RETRACE_PRECISE;
             else goto invalid_vga;
+        } else if (strstart(opts, ",cga_hacks=", &nextopt)) {
+            opts = nextopt;
+            while (*opts) {
+                if (strstart(opts, "all", &nextopt)) {
+                    opts = nextopt;
+                    vga_cga_hacks |= ~0;
+                } else if (strstart(opts, "palette_blanking", &nextopt)) {
+                    opts = nextopt;
+                    vga_cga_hacks |= VGA_CGA_HACK_PALETTE_BLANKING;
+                } else if (strstart(opts, "font_height", &nextopt)) {
+                    opts = nextopt;
+                    vga_cga_hacks |= VGA_CGA_HACK_FONT_HEIGHT;
+                } else {
+                    break;
+                }
+
+                if (*opts == '+') {
+                    opts++;
+                } else {
+                    break;
+                }
+            }
         } else goto invalid_vga;
         opts = nextopt;
     }
-- 
1.7.10.2.484.gcd07cc5