On Wednesday, April 28, 2021, Andrew Randrianasulu <randrianas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Monday, April 26, 2021, BALATON Zoltan <bala...@eik.bme.hu> wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> On Mon, 26 Apr 2021, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote: >> >>> Over the weekend I got a Red Hat 6.x (not RHEL!) for Alpha booting >>> under QEMU which was pretty neat. But I failed to find a succesful >>> combination to get X working; has anyone any suggestions? >>> >> >> Adding Andrew who has experimented with old X framebuffer so he may >> remember something more but that was on x86. > > > > Sorry, I still away from my desktop (with notes/logs), not sure when > return.. > I do not think I tried something that old.. Kernel 2.2 i guess, before any > attempt at r128 drm Kernel module was written (in 2.4?) and so before ddx > attempted to use that (as it tries by default in much newer distros) > > I tried Last debian for alpha, (5.0.x?) on qemu, it had bugs in cirrusfb > in 2.6.26 Kernel so i compiled like 2.6.32.last inside emulated system.. > This made fb works, But still there was no X for me... (can't recall exact > error - May be even sigabort or sigbus - but do not count on my memory on > this... /) > > Notes i used for launching qemu - > https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2014/02/19/alpha-linux-on-qemu/ > But Sadly pre-compressed disk image from that post really gone (it uses > funny error Page telling you to use login/password, yet file can't be > downloaded...) > Upd: https://web.archive.org/web/20191021110430/https://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/old/install/linux/DecAlpha/alpha-linux.7z This May give you kernel/initrd/disk image.. > > >> That distro was from around 2000; the challenge is since we don't have >>> VESA on non-x86, we can't change mode that way, so generic XF86_SVGA >>> doesn't want to play with any of the devices. >>> >>> I also tried the ati device, but the accelerated mach64 driver >>> didn't recognise that ID. >>> >> >> The ati-vga partially emulates an ATI Rage128 Pro so it won't work with >> mach64 driver that is older and while functionally similar has different >> registers. You probably need to load aty128fb and then set a mode with >> fbset then may need to edit X conf but I forgot which option was neded, >> something about UseFb or similar so it won't try to change mode itself but >> use the already set Linux FB because otherwise it did not detect the card >> properly but I don'r remember the details so may be wrong. Also some 2D >> accel is emulated so may work without disabling it but I think has some >> bugs so it may have glitches. >> >> Has anyone found any combo that works? >>> I suspect using one of the existing devices, lying about PCI ID, and >>> then turning off all accelerations might have a chance but I've not got >>> that far. >>> >> >> Changing the PCI ID may not help as these ATI chips have different >> registers so only compatible with the right drivers. I've tried to use >> current ati-vga with a Mac ROM that expects mach64 but it did not work. >> >> It may help to add -trace enable="ati*" and maybe also enable some debug >> defines in ati_int.h to see if it accesses the card at all but with the >> right driver that works with Rage128Pro it should produce some picture at >> least in fb console and we could run X with it on x86 before. >> >> More info on ati-vga is here: https://osdn.net/projects/qmig >> a/wiki/SubprojectAti >> >> By the way, last time I've experimented with it I've found that mouse >> pointer getting out of sync and jumping around is probably a result of >> mouse acceleration on the host is not taken into account when tracking >> guest pointer position. Is that possible and is there a way to fix it? >> >> Regards, >> BALATON Zoltan >> >
