Drive VGA card (Am I right ?)

[chiangyj]

After reading some related posts, I am not sure how
LinuxBios drive VGA card ?

LinuxBios replace normal BIOS with its own BIOS, 
so it can't drive VGA card like normal initialization(find the VGA card,
map  VGA BIOS to system memory, then call initialize routine)

There are two ways to drive it:
1. Use BIOS emulator: Run VGA BIOS in BIOS emulator and you
can drive it like normal initialization. BIOS emulator's job is to take
appropriate actions(hardware-dependent actions, eg. access VGA register)

2. Use matroxfb: Because it can intiailize VGA without VGA BIOS.

Am I right ?

And Is there another way to drive VGA card?

Thank for your help.

[Ronald G Minnich]

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, chiangyj wrote:
> LinuxBios replace normal BIOS with its own BIOS,
> so it can't drive VGA card like normal initialization(find the VGA card,
> map  VGA BIOS to system memory, then call initialize routine)

It can and does. It is a build option. Buy many VGA card BIOSes do illegal
actions so we do not support them.
> Use BIOS emulator: Run VGA BIOS in BIOS emulator and you
>
> can drive it like normal initialization. BIOS emulator's job is to take
> appropriate actions(hardware-dependent actions, eg. access VGA register)

we do that too, there is a supplied program to do this. It needs some
work.
> Use matroxfb: Because it can intiailize VGA without VGA BIOS.

We also do that.

ron