LinuxBIOS Video?

[Langlois Evan]

Hi,

If video isn't supported on a particular board, does this mean that video
won't work at all?   I could live with no video until after the Linux
kernel initialized things, but I'm guessing that the card won't even be
listed in the device table.

Could someone explain this to me?  Does this apply only to on-board video,
or all add-on cards.  Am I right in guessing that no add-on video cards
are supported?   Would it be possible to go into 16 bit mode temporarily
to jump into the video ROM and initialize the card?

Basically, I want a fast desktop (K8 maybe, the bus speeds seem to make it
worth it) without a PC BIOS (I only use Linux, usually Gentoo).  It looks
like LinuxBIOS is mainly for headless clusters.  The "Status" file on the
web site looks painfully outdated, and the FAQ really needs some updates,
and the mainboard directory in the source wasn't quite specific about what
was supported either.

I haven't gotten anything from this list in awhile, so please copy me
directly  as it would seem mail from the list isn't getting to me for some
reason (possibly a problem at my end).

Thanks,
Evan Langlois

[Hendricks David W.]

It's a bit sketchy at the time. Right now we can use ATi embedded devices
(Rage XL) pretty well, some older stuff like on the SiS630, and EPIA
whatever. But for newer stuff like GeForce cards, we have had to toggle
some IORRs and stuff and run the VGABIOS after Linux is booted. From here, 
framebuffering can be used for console display and X can run fully 
accelerated in AGP8x with fast writes and side band addressing. This has 
only been tested by us on the Tyan S2885.

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Langlois Evan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If video isn't supported on a particular board, does this mean that video
> won't work at all?   I could live with no video until after the Linux
> kernel initialized things, but I'm guessing that the card won't even be
> listed in the device table.
>
> Could someone explain this to me?  Does this apply only to on-board video,
> or all add-on cards.  Am I right in guessing that no add-on video cards
> are supported?   Would it be possible to go into 16 bit mode temporarily
> to jump into the video ROM and initialize the card?
>
> Basically, I want a fast desktop (K8 maybe, the bus speeds seem to make it
> worth it) without a PC BIOS (I only use Linux, usually Gentoo).  It looks
> like LinuxBIOS is mainly for headless clusters.  The "Status" file on the
> web site looks painfully outdated, and the FAQ really needs some updates,
> and the mainboard directory in the source wasn't quite specific about what
> was supported either.
>
> I haven't gotten anything from this list in awhile, so please copy me
> directly  as it would seem mail from the list isn't getting to me for some
> reason (possibly a problem at my end).
>
> Thanks,
> Evan Langlois
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Langlois Evan]

> It's a bit sketchy at the time. Right now we can use ATi embedded devices
> (Rage XL) pretty well, some older stuff like on the SiS630, and EPIA
> whatever. But for newer stuff like GeForce cards, we have had to toggle
> some IORRs and stuff and run the VGABIOS after Linux is booted. From here,
> framebuffering can be used for console display and X can run fully
> accelerated in AGP8x with fast writes and side band addressing. This has
> only been tested by us on the Tyan S2885.

What are the chances of this working on the Tyan S2875S ?  Possible with
an ATI Radeon card instead of GeForce (assuming the same tricks work on
both).

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8ws.html

And does booting from SATA work?

I heard something about Tyan supporting LinuxBIOS - is it actually
possible to order with LinuxBIOS pre-installed?  I noticed there is a
port80 LED on this board as well - which may help.

Thanks,
Evan

[Hendricks David W.]

We haven't had any success with Radeon cards in LinuxBIOS in our lab, 
though Ollie Lho might have some more information on that for you.

And yes, Tyan does support LinuxBIOS. Just ask YhLu what the best option 
is. He even has the LSI controller working on the newer Tyan boards, 
AFAIK.

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Langlois Evan wrote:
> > It's a bit sketchy at the time. Right now we can use ATi embedded devices
> > (Rage XL) pretty well, some older stuff like on the SiS630, and EPIA
> > whatever. But for newer stuff like GeForce cards, we have had to toggle
> > some IORRs and stuff and run the VGABIOS after Linux is booted. From here,
> > framebuffering can be used for console display and X can run fully
> > accelerated in AGP8x with fast writes and side band addressing. This has
> > only been tested by us on the Tyan S2885.
>
> What are the chances of this working on the Tyan S2875S ?  Possible with
> an ATI Radeon card instead of GeForce (assuming the same tricks work on
> both).
>
> http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8ws.html
>
> And does booting from SATA work?
>
> I heard something about Tyan supporting LinuxBIOS - is it actually
> possible to order with LinuxBIOS pre-installed?  I noticed there is a
> port80 LED on this board as well - which may help.
>
> Thanks,
> Evan

[ron minnich]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Langlois Evan wrote:
> What are the chances of this working on the Tyan S2875S ?  Possible with
> an ATI Radeon card instead of GeForce (assuming the same tricks work on
> both).

It should work fine since the approach we take is 8086 emulation to 
support the bios.
> And does booting from SATA work?

not tried.
> I heard something about Tyan supporting LinuxBIOS - is it actually
> possible to order with LinuxBIOS pre-installed?  I noticed there is a
> port80 LED on this board as well - which may help.

yes indeed. You can contact Charlie Ding ([e-mail]) who has been 
very helpful to linuxbios users.

ron

[ron minnich]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Hendricks David W. wrote:
> We haven't had any success with Radeon cards in LinuxBIOS in our lab, 
> though Ollie Lho might have some more information on that for you.

oops. I didn't realize we had trouble with them.

oh well.

ron

[administrivia] Broken mail servers

[Joshua Wise]

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Hi,

[e-mail], it appears your mailserver is broken and is sending email that 
you are CC'ed to (and possibly any email that you recieve from the list) back 
to the list.

The appropriate message headers showing me this are:

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Please fix this.
joshua

- -- 
Joshua Wise | www.joshuawise.com
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[Hendricks David W.]

I thought we did, I could be mistaken... I don't think I ever saw the 
Tyan Tachyon (Radeon 9800 Pro) come up in our lab, not even with the 
emulator.

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, ron minnich wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Hendricks David W. wrote:
> > We haven't had any success with Radeon cards in LinuxBIOS in our lab, 
> > though Ollie Lho might have some more information on that for you.
>
> oops. I didn't realize we had trouble with them.
>
> oh well.
>
> ron

[administrivia] Broken mail servers

[Hendricks David W.]

Maybe that's why his domain name is "ddos" :)

On Thu, 29 Apr 2004, Joshua Wise wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> [e-mail], it appears your mailserver is broken and is sending email that 
> you are CC'ed to (and possibly any email that you recieve from the list) back 
> to the list.
>
> The appropriate message headers showing me this are:
>
> Received: from nwn.definitive.org (unknown [65.242.93.132])
>    by joshuawise.com (Postfix on joshuawise.com) with ESMTP id 28645322A
>    for ; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:59:58 -0400 (EDT)
> Received: from nwn.definitive.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
>    by nwn.definitive.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i3T2cGK25945;
>    Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:38:16 -0400
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>    by nwn.definitive.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i3T2bEK25893
>    for ; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:37:14 -0400
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>    id C531A25418; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:44:32 -0500 (CDT)
> Received: from mailwasher-b.lanl.gov (unknown [192.16.0.25])
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>
> Please fix this.
> joshua
>
> Joshua Wise | www.joshuawise.com
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[Li-Ta Lo]

On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 14:07, Hendricks David W. wrote:
> I thought we did, I could be mistaken... I don't think I ever saw the 
> Tyan Tachyon (Radeon 9800 Pro) come up in our lab, not even with the 
> emulator.

Last time I check, the ATI vgabios wanted to install int 0x10 handler
and call into itself via int 0x10. The emulator can't do this yet.

Ollie

[administrivia] Broken mail servers

[Langlois Evan]

> Maybe that's why his domain name is "ddos" :)

Its because of some bad integration between the mail server and an inhouse
spam removal system.  I'm going to rewrite it this weekend during our
other upgrades.

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2004, Li-Ta Lo wrote:
> Last time I check, the ATI vgabios wanted to install int 0x10 handler
> and call into itself via int 0x10. The emulator can't do this yet.

Right, I had forgotten this problem.

Silly VGA BIOS.

ron