Re: radeon-pre-2

["Antonino A. Daplas" <adaplas@hotpop.com>]

On Saturday 11 September 2004 13:19, Dave Airlie wrote:
> The other thing I think some people are confusing is 2.4 fbdev and 2.6...
> there is no console support in 2.6 fbdev drivers, it is all in the fbcon
> stuff, so the fbdev drivers are only doing 2d mode setting and monitor
> detection, some points I've considered are:

Correct.  fbdev is almost completely separate from fbcon. And you can
actually rip out fbdev and place it anywhere you want. As long as fbcon has
access to a pointer to framebuffer memory, and the characteristics of the
display such as depth, pitch, etc, then the framebuffer console will work.
Throw in a few functions, such as for buffer flipping, and fbcon will be happy. 

Hardware acceleration is entirely optional, and most drivers except for a few
(such as vga16fb or amiga) can use the cfb_* drawing functions.

There's also a recent change in the latest bk tree that changes the
intialization order of the framebuffer system. Previously, fbcon triggers
fbmem, then fbmem triggers each individual drivers.  This method requires
that a working fbdev is present, otherwise fbcon will fail (although you can
do a con2fbmap later, or modprobe a driver). With the change, the
order is reversed, driver->fbmem->fbcon.  This change is probably
significant because fbcon can wait until an active framebuffer activates.

In theory, one can have a process (kernel or userland) change the video
mode, then provide the in-kernel driver with the necessary information
about the layout of the framebuffer.  When this in-kernel driver gets the
necessary information, it can trigger fbcon. This in-kernel driver need not
know anything about the hardware (unless 2D acceleration is needed).

Tony