Kevin O'Connor wrote:
On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 08:32:15AM -0600, Jordan Crouse wrote:
On 04/10/08 21:59 -0400, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
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
[...]
Not just a possibility - but a certainty. Geode could be ported in a matter of hours.
Hi Jordan,
I've spent some time taking a closer look at this. The bochs vgabios has a large number of in/out calls. If the geode vga doesn't natively emulate the legacy in/out ports then I think there is a fair amount of work to port bochs vgabios to geode.
I have been looking at the Geode LX databook and on page 303, it lists the standard VGA I/O ports (3CC, 3C2, 3BA/3DA etc.) which I had previously assumed were emulated in the VSA. If they are indeed implemented in hardware, it should be able to act as a standard VGA device. However, this would make me wonder what the VGA emulation VSA is for.
If they are software I/O ports implemented in the VSA, an alternative would be to make an open-source VGA emulation module for OpenVSA. Unfortunately, my resources are too limited to attempt this task.
Just as a matter of curiosity, what is the licensing issue surrounding the VGA emulation code? I understand that it is not open-source but is it available as a binary?