Michael Robinson wrote:
It looks like LVDS is a BIOS only thing, all of the pages on getting it running under Linux refer you back to the BIOS... Hmm...
Thats because thats normally a bios/vbios type deal. When you are dealing with a panel direct its a whole different ball game.
Do you know if the LVDS is part of the EPIA video system or if its seperate descrete chips?
LVDS has a couple of flavors depending on what type of panel you are talking to. So the vbios will normally query the system bios for a panel type or some bios config setting. Based on the panel type it will set the internal chip registers or toggle gpio lines to put descrete chips in the right mode.
CRTC Timeings are also panel specific. There are VESA timeings but lots of panels still need tweaking.
some linux fb drivers and X drivers can deal with these issues but for legacy VGA mode the vbios enables some video sytem trickery.