[LinuxBIOS] [RFC] Call for Action: LinuxBIOS foundations

[Joseph Smith]

Quoting Rasmus Wiman <rasmus at wiman.org>:

> Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 12:28:23AM +0200, Rasmus Wiman wrote:
>> > when I can afford it, I will buy a new MB with integrated vga,
>> > probably the one I think stands the best chance of getting
>> > supported. Right now I think that would mean NVidia or VIA, but
>> > I know rather little about it.
>>
>> Aha! I think there is a slight misunderstanding.
>>
>> "Integrated" graphics are not really any different from discrete
>> graphics as far as LB is concerned. Neither better nor worse.
>
> Sounds good. I was thinking that memory initalisation might be somehow
> diferent when the graphics hardware wants some of the memory.
>
>> There are two graphics chips supported natively in LB, they are the
>> ATI Rage XL and the Trident Blade3d. I've only heard the former
>> confirmed working.
>
> Didn't even know LB has that kind of support for any graphics chip. I
> only knew about the CONFIG_PCI_ROM_RUN and (if needed ) extracting the
> vga bios from the stock bios approach. By the way, at least Rage XL
> (with its own memory) seems pretty common on server mainboards.Is it a
> coincidence that just that chip is supported?
>

Rasmus have you read this:

http://www.linuxbios.org/data/vgabios/

It goes into pretty good detail on how graphics work in LinuxBIOS.

Thanks - Joe