[LinuxBIOS] LinuxTag Berlin 29/5-2/6

Peter Stuge stuge-linuxbios at cdy.org
Sat May 26 16:37:48 CEST 2007


On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 01:53:32AM +0200, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> > ..instead of using the VGA BIOS, right?
> 
> Indeed. No more messing about with that.

Great, thanks for clarifying that.


> > How does davem's viafb fit into the picture?
> 
> Is this the one that's based on the register document i wrote up in
> 2004? I don't know, never used it. It won't work properly without
> the VGA BIOS though.

I think that's the one, yes. I "only" needed fbdev support so I tried
it and it worked well. (Yes, with the VGA BIOS.) Is there another way
to get fbdev that you recommend?


> You can use my xf86-video-unichrome directly, with no VGA BIOS,
> it'll run just like normal. Just make sure you get the git version.
> Any X will do too.

Awesome! :)


On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 12:14:20PM +0200, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> > BTW: Can we switch to certain resolutions and depths, as well as
> > use different outputs (VGA, TV, ..) with your userspace utility?
> 
> No, this is purely to get 640x480 textmode to work on the CRT 
> connection. This is the safe option that will work for 98% of the
> EPIA-M users out there. The other 2% are those who are fully
> dependant on the DVI or LVDS/RGB display modules.

Does xf86-video-unichrome also work on the plain EPIA by the way?


> I can of course insert a full modesetting system, but that will
> mean doing things like EDID parsing and cvt modeline generation in
> linuxbios. And this will all be getting rather big rather quickly.

Does it have to be done at runtime? A compile time option for
graphics mode and output would be a really great feature too.


> 640x480 at 60Hz is somewhat safe, as most devices on the CRT
> connection will be able to handle this, as this is the default BIOS
> textmode.

Yes, fully agreed.


//Peter




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