Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] S3Virge fb on PPC?

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Meelis Roos wrote:
> I have a mac (powermac 7300/166 upgraded to G3/280) that has broken
> onboard video (probaly a half-working address bit in its video RAM). The
> computer also has a S3Virge PCI card with fcode so it can boot MacOS
> with it and see the picture.

  [...]

> Also, we seem to have a s3virge framebuffer for Amigas, how difficult
> would it be to port it to PPC+x86 (I have a virge DX on a PC too where I
> would like to see accelerated fb for faster scrolling). I would like to
> do it if I can.

Up to 2.4.18 virgefb relied on the AmigaOS driver to have initialized the card.
Since your ViRGE card has a F-code ROM, adopting virgefb to support it cannot
be very difficult.

In 2.4.19 (and 2.5.x) virgefb can do the initialization itself (that is, on
Amiga CyberVision64/3D cards). What this means for PC cards is unknown, since
they may have been `screwed up' by the VGA BIOS code. For your F-code card it's
probably harmless since OF uses a linear graphics mode.

Conclusion: I'd say it's not that much work. Good luck and enjoy ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds