On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 02:16:27PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
You'd need a VGA emulation VSA and AFAIK that piece of software is not available as open source due to an interesting rights situation.
Alternatively you could build a VGA option rom that initializes VGA on the Geode. The hardware dependent code is in libpayload already. It just needs to be integrated in something like "vgabios"
Just a random note - I think it should be possible to port the above "vgabios" project from bcc to gcc - similar to how SeaBIOS was ported. The gcc compiler produces much better code than bcc (even after all the 32bit prefixes are added), and a port to gcc should make adding chip specific functions much easier.
I'm not an expert on VGA, but I think it may be possible to implement a bare bones vgabios with only a couple of chip specific functions (eg, initialization and mode switching). Given the recent availability of specs from AMD and Via, there is a possibility that on board VGA could be completely handled with open source code.
Any interest? -Kevin