James Hendricks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Here's a few notes and clarifications in regards to video and LinuxBIOS;
> is anyone seriously interested in getting support for other video cards?
> I have to warn everyone that I haven't worked on any of this for several
> months, so I'm a bit rusty.
>
> LinuxBIOS has support for the SiS video chip, Matrox Millenium PCI cards,
> and the Cirrus GD5480 as found in the Intel L400GX+. Other Cirrus chips
> and Matrox chips will likely be easy to support. ATI and Riva cards look
> similarly "easy" (see below). Although it may seem odd not to have video
> "immediately", this is no different than with the normal BIOS. Serial
> debug is an added bonus.
And the Texas Instruments TVP4020 [Permedia 2]
Do you know where I'd need to start to get an ATI Rage XL chip working?
It is the onboard video controller for the Dual-Athlon board, and I would
like to get it working.
> As for what cards are easy to support, the trickiest part of the video
> card setup I believe is the memory init because the timings could be just
> about anything. However, sometimes we are spared by a chip that only
> accepts a limited assortment of RAM, know how to detect the settings, or
> best of all knows what to do by default. To get the GD5480 up, all I had
> to do was twiddle a register called something like "RAM Init Reg"; the
> framebuffer driver took it from there. I'd bet that if I twiddled the
> register to go into text mode we wouldn't even need a framebuffer! The
> Matrox worked right out of the box -- it automatically turns RAM on (why
> other cards don't do likewise I don't know). Furthermore, the Matrox
> drivers are good. However, not all Matrox cards seem to work as well.
Hmm. If this is all that needs to be done it sounds promising.
> If this is useful and anyone wants more info or to work on a video
> chipset, especially the ATI chips that come with most servers these days,
> feel free to mail me. Video support would definitely make this project
> more palatable to the novice.
Agreed.
Eric
