Re: Feature Freeze?

[Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 03:23:36PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 03:04:57PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 08:46:52PM +0800, Antonino Daplas wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 19:05, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 04:26:04PM +0800, Antonino Daplas wrote:
> > > > > > > I believe it's time to finalize what is needed/not needed for the
> > > > > > > framebuffer framework:
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > 1. Text mode support?
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Would this work also on arches which don't traditionnaly do text mode ?
> > > > > > Like ppc for example. 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Yes, pixel-based drawing is still the default.  It's only for drivers
> > > > > (matrox and sbus) where it might be needed.
> > > > 
> > > > And do you think there is a chance of standard vgacon working on a ppc
> > > > board ? I have a pegasos powerpc/pop based board, and its OF use a x86
> > > > emulator to boot the card into vga textmode. matroxfb is broken on it
> > > > last i tried, and radeonfb was not uptodate in the kernel that was
> > > > provided, and i there is problems with other fbdevs also, so it
> > > > would be nice if it was possible to use vgacon on such hardware, until
> > > > the fbdevs are fixed, but it is a bit hard to fix things without a
> > > > working console.
> > > 
> > > If your BIOS initializes your graphics card to VGA text mode, vgacon should
> > > work. The same is true for vga16fb.
> > 
> > It is just a configuration thingy then ? 
> 
> Yes. Enable vgacon, and see what happens...

Ok, i will try again once i get the board back, but i think i remember
that i tried it already, and nothing happened.

> > > Vga16fb works on the S3 in my LongTrail, iff I first run a BIOS emulator to
> > > initialize the card to textmode. Never tried vgacon, since the BIOS emulator is
> > > a userspace program and vga16fb can be modular.
> > 
> > Mmm, but since the emulator is run in OF, this would be ok ?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > Do you think that vesafb would work also ?
> 
> Vesafb requires the boot loader to make BIOS calls before the kernel is
> launched. Can you do that from U-Boot (that's your firmware, right)?

No, it uses smartfirmware. I will have to look into this more, i am not
all that familiar with OF, and the docs i found are not all that easy to
get into.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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