Programmatically probe video chipset

Programmatically probe video chipset

[Paul Powell]

Is there an API or other means to determine what video
card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
on his machine?

Thanks,
Paul

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Re: Programmatically probe video chipset

[Brian Gerst]

Paul Powell wrote:
> 
> Is there an API or other means to determine what video
> card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
> on his machine?
> 
> Thanks,
> Paul

The only real way is to correlate the PCI id with a chipset.  This is
what XFree86 does.

--

				Brian Gerst
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Re: Programmatically probe video chipset

[Alan Cox]

> Is there an API or other means to determine what video
> card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
> on his machine?

On a modern X86 machine use the PCI/AGP bus data. On a PS/2 use the MCA bus
data. On nubus use the nubus probe data. On old style ISA bus PCs done a large
pointy hat and spend several years reading arcane and forbidden scrolls
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Re: Programmatically probe video chipset

[Fernando Fuganti]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Paul Powell wrote:

> Is there an API or other means to determine what video
> card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
> on his machine?

try kudzu (a hardware detection lib from RedHat) or libdetect (another one
but from Mandrake)
they all provide a reasonable interface and database
 

Fernando Fuganti

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Re: Programmatically probe video chipset

[Henrik Stokseth]

Paul Powell <moloch16@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is there an API or other means to determine what video
> card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
> on his machine?

for PCI and AGP cards you can scan through the bus and fetch all
vendor:device numbers of type 7 (vga compatible) IIRC and then match them
against a database. i have the code for this if you're interested.
for ISA cards that has PnP functionality you can get the vendor string using
a PnP interrupt service routine, I have never actually done that but i know
that it is possible.
But for most cards you can use the VESA VBE API to fetch the information,
you will have to do this from real/virtual mode afaik.
If you're not interrested in programming hardware you can use the pci
interface in /proc instead which is the best solution if you're running
linux. ;o)

-henrik


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