Dear Kevin O'Connor,
In message 20110511035148.GA14339@morn.localdomain you wrote:
And what about all those Linux drivers in drivers/video - Would porting them (to U-Boot) elliminate the need for BIOS/Option ROMs
I'm not really sure - I'd guess it will vary significantly from card to card and driver to driver.
Indeed.
I'm pretty sure you need to run the VGA option ROM if you want the legacy text console mode. However, some of the Linux/X11 drivers will likely be able to get the card into graphics mode without running the option ROM.
Usually you have to run the ROM init code; on many cards this is needed for example to initialize the video RAM (well known problem, isn't it?). Guess why the code in drivers/bios_emulator is needed in U-Boot ?
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk