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First post, by superfury

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When I look at the current releases of the open-source SeaBIOS BIOS, I see various files in there: https://code.coreboot.org/p/seabios/downloads/

It lists the following prebuilt ROMs:
bios.bin-1.11.0.gz
bios.bin-test-20120613.gz
bios.bin.elf-1.11.0.gz
legacybios-0.2.2.tar.gz
seabios-1.11.0.tar.gz

Which one is the one I need for using with my x86 emulation(80386/80486 emulation supported)?

Looking on the wiki(https://seabios.org/), nothing is mentioned about the differences between those prebuilt ROMs?

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Reply 1 of 3, by gdjacobs

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Is seabios-1.11.0.tar.gz a source tarball? Apparently bios.bin is what's needed for emulators like qemu. I'm not 100% sure what the elf binary is for.

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Reply 2 of 3, by kazblox

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You need a BIOS to match the I/O writes of the chipset/memory/IO logic of the 386 board you are emulating. For example, different BIOSes might handle EMS and other extensions differently because one chipset may do it differently despite following a derivative of the AT architecture similar to how a Deskpro 386 handled it. It's also why swapping BIOS ROM chips on real motherboards with different ones won't work 100% unless they were targeted for the same chipset, and that said chipset is wired up electronically on both boards the same way.

You are emulating a Deskpro 386 from what I see, so none of those BIOS ROMs are going to match correctly at all. If you want the SeaBIOS code to run, you need to target and modify the code so that it uses Deskpro 386 I/O functions.

Reply 3 of 3, by Jo22

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I think the same. The only exceptions to this,- which comes to mind right now-, are early PC, XT or AT motherboards.
They pre-dated what we now commonly consider "chip sets" and were often based on dedicated logic chips, which usually all came from different
manufacturers, but were more or less the same on the software side.

The 386 platform can be considered on the border line, since early designs used official companion chips for the 80386 that were
made by the same manufacturer as the main processor itself (Intel, in that case).

I guess this was because the i386, like its older brother, the 286, wasn't designed especially for IBM compatible PCs yet.
Around the time they both were state-of-the-art designs and intended for telecommuncations, robotics, mini computers, Unix machines, etc.

I remember magazine reviews in which they were considered as an alternative especially to main frames/mini computers of the time.
The computing power and address space/memory protection schemes of both the 286 and 386, -but especially the 386-,
were amazing for its time (early to mid 80s).

The 486 was the first intel processor to begin to target personal computers and workstations in a widerscope.
Mainly CAD/CAM were fields of interests for early adaptors of the 486 platform, I think. LAN servers, too.
Later on, the 486 began to start its success in multmeda applications, prevouisly a domain of
Motorola 68000 machines, like Amigas and Macs of the time.
It was alo the era in which "chipsets" became the norm instead of a novelty (like NEAT prevoiusly was)

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