FW: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia

FW: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia

[Russell McGuire]

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All,

 

I have finally got my linux kernel up and working and was able to log in via
the serial port, i.e. console=/dev/ttyS0, Using root file system over NFS.
Everything seems to work fine, thanks to Leo and Kumar for pointing me to
the right /git/ tree.

 

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.

 

I know I am missing something with either a 'bootargs' variable, or perhaps
a mis-configured set of compile options, i.e. perhaps to many frame buffer
drivers inside the kernel that may conflict???

 

Does anyone have a 101 on how to enable basic 640x480 or 800x600 using
either the nvidiafb or perhaps a more rudimentary driver, vga only?

 

Thanks,

 

-Russ


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RE: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia

[Bill Farrow]

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=20
> '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