[LinuxBIOS] booting without vga

Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serrano at gmail.com
Fri Aug 25 09:23:41 CEST 2006


On 8/25/06, Richard Smith <smithbone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/25/06, Rogelio Serrano <rogelio.serrano at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is there a way for linuxbios to initialize the graphics hardware
> > directly? besides making linux use the framebuffer directly on bootup.
> > and maybe making filo use the framebuffer too.
>
> If the hardware was standard then yes but each graphics mfg does it
> differently and its hidden by the VGA bios.  Think of each graphics
> card as a graphics northbridge.  You have to eanble all the right
> bits, turn on the video ram, etc.  On 99% of graphics cards the info
> on how to do this is not known.  So you have to run the vga bios to do
> it.
>
>
> --
> Richard A. Smith
>

ugh!!!

and the vga bios is running at 16 bit mode? and its slow with all its
timing loops and other stuff.

which graphic cards are in the other 1%?

hah! this is another argument for ogp. i have to start studying fpgas
now. i need an open graphics card that boots at a fraction of the
speed of current cards and boots straight into framebuffer mode.

-- 
things i hate about my linux pc:

1. it takes more than a second to boot up
2. keeps asking about filenames and directories
3. does not remember what i was working on yesterday
4. does not remember all the changes i have ever made
5.cannot figure out necessary settings by itself




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