[OpenBIOS] OpenBIOS PowerPC missing open firmware commands

[Tarl Neustaedter]

On 2011-Jul-19 18:50 , Alexander von Gluck wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> It sounds like your display driver didn't initialize them.
>>>
>>> Just to verify, your == OpenBIOS' display driver? Or should the OS 
>>> do something?
>>
>> Correct. Either FCode from a card or some kind of builtin driver that
>> Openbios knows to attach to a PCI node.
>
> This doesn't seem right, these commands work on OpenFirmware as-is. 
> Their goal is to clear the text OpenBIOS console and toggle the cursor.
>
> Example:
>
> Type:  toggle-cursor at the OpenFirmware prompt on any mac and the 
> cursor will disappear / reappear.
>        erase-screen and the OpenFirmware screen will erase.

Correct. It sounds like the video driver in your environment isn't 
initializing, so these defer words aren't getting set up. The IEEE 1275 
specification indicates these are required to be initialized as part of 
the terminal emulator package, which is the piece of code which knows 
how to translate from text to bits on a screen.

There is a bunch more about this under the fb8-* words in the 
specification, particularly see the fb8-install method.