works.
Well, ok not really hard. Not all is readonly, but the main system runs out of the RAM and at the moment I use a kernel where is serial output disabled ;)
That's why the first step in my instructions said to "get a serial console up." Its pretty much required for VGA debugging.
I have piped the output to a file, which is very large and I think it is not useful to attach the whole file. Also this try seems successfuller, because of the screen goes black and sometimes it flickers. <ctrl>c stops testbios normaly.
You need to comment out the in/out printfs. in vgabios edit the file helper_exec.c starting at line 131 comment out all the printf's for the in and out statements. That will quiet down the noise level quite a bit. When you run it on the target system you may need to always re-direct the output to a file. I've found that the slowdown associated with the printf to the console (which has to go out the serial port) may cause some trouble with timing.
Route it to a file to look at but also try routeing the output to
/dev/null to see if it makes any difference.
Those printfs really need to be off by default.
If vgabios succeeds then you should see some sort of bios sign on message on your screen. Since there was no vga available when Linux booted there won't be a console. You might be able to load a framebuffer _module_ at that time. But the best dianostic is to try and load the X server. The X log file has lots of good info in it for debugging. Note that you don't need the whole X setup just the server for your chip.
-- Richard A. Smith