Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Feature Freeze?

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

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...

> > 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)?

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