Geode Video Xfree86 and VSA

[Bari Ari]

Anyone know the current status of running XFree86 on the Geodes?

I'm currently looking at working on getting the VSA running on the 
Geodes as a BLOB. Anyone else started on this yet?

--Bari

[Bari Ari]

Bari Ari wrote:
> Anyone know the current status of running XFree86 on the Geodes?

Just to clarify. I meant under ADLO or using LinuxBIOS.
> I'm currently looking at working on getting the VSA running on the 
> Geodes as a BLOB. Anyone else started on this yet?
>
> --Bari

[Christer Weinigel]

Bari Ari  writes:
> Anyone know the current status of running XFree86 on the Geodes?

I did get XFree86 3.something running fine on a GX1 + CS5530 with
Linxbios using the Geode Framebuffer driver to set up the display and
then just using the unaccelerated XF86_FBDev.  On the SC2200 XFree86
did not work, but that's because XFree86 tries to mess with the
keyboard controller directly and then hangs in a loop waiting for the
keyboard controller to stop being busy.  Fix that problem in XFree86
and it should be no problem.

I haven't tried the accelerated geode drivers.
> I'm currently looking at working on getting the VSA running on the
> Geodes as a BLOB. Anyone else started on this yet?

I've just looked briefly at it, but if I remember correctly, what's
needed is to copy the VSA BIOS to ram somewhere below 640k (since it
should be started in real mode) and then jumped into.  The BIOS has to
provide a few INT 15h functions to report the current memory size.
There might be some additional restraints such as only certain base
addresses working (since only XpressROM/Insyde use this) or that the
VSA code relies on a certain layout of the rest of the BIOS in ROM.

Famous last words: how hard can it be :)

/Christer

[Bari Ari]

Christer Weinigel wrote:
> I've just looked briefly at it, but if I remember correctly, what's
> needed is to copy the VSA BIOS to ram somewhere below 640k (since it
> should be started in real mode) and then jumped into.  The BIOS has to
> provide a few INT 15h functions to report the current memory size.
> There might be some additional restraints such as only certain base
> addresses working (since only XpressROM/Insyde use this) or that the
> VSA code relies on a certain layout of the rest of the BIOS in ROM.

That's why I was looking at possibly getting BOCHS to work with VSA for 
the INT 15 functions. Having full graphics and the audio up on the 
SCx2xx for embedded apps would be nice.

--Bari