From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from az33egw02.freescale.net (az33egw02.freescale.net [192.88.158.103]) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0F94DDF94 for ; Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:04:35 +1100 (EST) Message-ID: <45BEB5C7.1090304@freescale.com> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:04:39 -0600 From: Xianghua Xiao MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Russell McGuire Subject: Re: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia References: <000c01c74417$913d51c0$6405a8c0@absolut> In-Reply-To: <000c01c74417$913d51c0$6405a8c0@absolut> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Cc: linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org List-Id: Linux on Embedded PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , I got a patch against 2.6 kernel from Scitechsoft last year and we brought up ATI card on PPC platform using that. U-boot shares the same emulator as the one Scitechsoft uses however the latter is a newer version. Yes you can use an unchanged u-boot(i.e. no video emulation under u-boot at all), merge the video-patch to your kernel to use ATI card directly. You can boot with serial port then the kernel will activate video console and x-windows. if you need the patch, I can send it to you offline. xianghua Russell McGuire wrote: > Bill / ALL > > Thanks for the info. Looking around I see that there is some aged code in > the U-boot tree under the MIA board that is a BIOS emulator. Seems like a > huge mess to get a video card to turn on. > > I am using a Freescale MPC8360 so yes, ppc architecture and thus the > problems with BIOS emulation with PCI. > > Do we still need a BIOS emulator if we don't want to run the VGA console > during bootup, but only for post boot? > > I.e. does the NVIDIA driver have enough smarts to initialize the card after > Linux is 100% booted up? I really only need to be able to use the graphics > card for user applications, and booting with it is not a requirement. If > somehow I could boot with the serial console, and then run a user mode > application that initiated the card? > > -Russ > > > > Russell McGuire wrote: > >> Next I have plugged in a nVidia GeForce FX5200 PCI card, >> and compiled in the nvidafb driver. >> >> I can see clearly the PCI card is being detected and the >> nvidiafb driver is being registerd, it can even detect >> the monitor I have connected. >> >> However, when I enabled the kernel to use the framer >> buffer console, by compiling in that feature, it just >> 'seems' to hang after the console_init call. >> > > Hi Russ, > I got to the same point last year with an ATI PCI card on a MPC8560 > system. At this stage, I believe that to get the card displaying > graphics you will need to run the card's Video BIOS to initialise the > card correctly. > > I'm guessing that you are running a PPC cpu :-) and that the FX5200 is a > consumer x86 graphics card. If so, the Video BIOS will be x86 > instructions and you will need to run it with an emulator. > > A company called SciTech is maintaining an x86emu project for doing > this: > http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/dev/x86_emulator.html > > I believe that Xorg also has a x86emu module, so I was going to see if I > could get an Xorg installation going and let it do it's magic. > > For us, getting Xorg running would prove the graphics capability of our > platform and we can start writing a GUI. Then it would be just a matter > of getting uBoot to display something during boot to keep the customers > happy... > > > Bill > > _______________________________________________ > Linuxppc-embedded mailing list > Linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org > https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxppc-embedded >