[HN Gopher] Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system
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       Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system
        
       Author : bonki
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2025-05-26 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | ehutch79 wrote:
       | Why?
        
         | p_ing wrote:
         | DOS. Can't think of any other reason.
        
           | okanat wrote:
           | You get better DOS emulation with DOSBox, rather than trying
           | to make the modern peripherals work on a CSM / BIOS system.
        
         | II2II wrote:
         | The two reasons I can think of: to run legacy or educational
         | operating systems. There are going to be limitations to what
         | can be supported, but simply getting the OS to boot is part of
         | the battle. It would also be useful for those who want to
         | experiment with operating systems by creating their own. Yes
         | you can do that without BIOS support, but there are many old
         | tutorials floating around that depend upon BIOS support. The
         | BIOS was also created as a primitive hardware compatibility
         | layer, so it will provide basic support for things like I/O.
        
         | axiolite wrote:
         | From the project page: "Boot FreeDOS, Windows XP, and Windows
         | 7"
         | 
         | Additionally, it was just 3 years ago that memtest86plus
         | finally got a UEFI version. That was painful for a few years
         | there. (Though the 4GB RAM limit would have made this not an
         | ideal solution.)
         | 
         | I'm sure there are other such self-hosting utilities that
         | haven't been and may not be ported/rewritten to work under
         | UEFI.
        
       | o11c wrote:
       | Huh, Github fails quite badly at dealing with submodules from
       | other forges.
        
       | LukeShu wrote:
       | Very cool hack.
       | 
       | But, as okanat says, if the goal is to run legacy operating
       | systems, then modern hardware is going to be challenging in other
       | ways too. IME the biggest thing I want PC BIOS back for is the
       | ability to use non-GPT disk layouts, which this doesn't
       | accomplish as, as to use it you put it on the EFI partition on
       | your GPT disk.
        
       | mmastrac wrote:
       | > Windows XP/7's video modesetting logic is a bit mysterious. It
       | may try to set a incompatible mode using int10h, which will cause
       | flickering or even black screen after transferring control to the
       | legacy OS.
       | 
       | I would really love to know more about this.
       | 
       | I assume it's this VGA driver:
       | 
       | https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/tree/master/Source/XPSP1/NT...
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-26 23:00 UTC)