Unreal Mode

Unreal mode consist of breaking the '64Kb' limit of real mode segments, but still keeping 16 bits instruction and segment*16+offset address formation by tweaking the descriptor caches.

Usage

Unreal mode is recommended in the two following cases :

• you're trying to extend a legacy 16-bits DOS program so that it can deal with larger datas and neither vm86, nor xms is suitable for your needs
• you're trying to load something that will run in 32 bits mode and which is larger than 640Kb (so you cannot load it in conventionnal memory) and you don't want to bother with a disk driver called from pmode yet, and you do not wish to switch between real and protected mode for copying chunks from the conventional memory buffer to the high memory areas ...

You still will not have full access to all physical RAM if you do not have have the A20 Line enabled; all the "odd" 1-megabyte blocks will be unavailable.

Implementation

The reason for doing this is to enable 32-bit offsets in real mode. However, you won't be able to go past 1 meg quite yet.

In protected mode, the bits 3-15 in the segment register are an index into the descriptor table. That's why in this code 0x08 = 1000b gets you the 1 entry.

When this register given a "selector", a "segment descriptor cache register" is filled with the descriptor values, including the size (or limit). After the switch back to real mode, these values are not modified, regardless of what value is in the 16-bit segment register. So the 64k limit is no longer valid and 32-bit offsets can be used with the real-mode addressing rules (i.e. shift segment 4 bits, then add offset).

Finally, note that IP is unaffected by all this, so the code itself is still limited to 64k.

; Assembly example

; nasmw boot.asm -o boot.bin
; partcopy boot.bin 0 200 -f0

[ORG 0x7c00]              ; add to offsets

start:   xor ax, ax       ; make it zero
   mov ds, ax             ; DS=0
   mov ss, ax             ; stack starts at seg 0
   mov sp, 0x7e00         ; 200h past code start

   cli                    ; no interrupts
   push ds                ; save real mode

   lgdt [gdtinfo]         ; load gdt register

   mov  eax, cr0          ; switch to pmode by
   or al,1                ; set pmode bit
   mov  cr0, eax

   mov  bx, 0x08          ; select descriptor 1
   mov  ds, bx            ; 8h = 1000b

   and al,0xFE            ; back to realmode
   mov  cr0, eax          ; by toggling bit again

   pop ds                 ; get back old segment
   sti

   mov bx, 0x0f01         ; attrib/char of smiley
   mov eax, 0x0b8000      ; note 32 bit offset
   mov word [ds:eax], bx

   jmp $                  ; loop forever

gdtinfo:
   dw gdt_end - gdt - 1   ;last byte in table
   dd gdt                 ;start of table

gdt         dd 0,0        ; entry 0 is always unused
flatdesc    db 0xff, 0xff, 0, 0, 0, 10010010b, 11001111b, 0
gdt_end:

   times 510-($-$$) db 0  ; fill sector w/ 0's
   db 0x55                ; req'd by some BIOSes
   db 0xAA