Re: [linux-fbdev] Re: atyfb with 2.3.30 ond x86
Egbert Eich (eich@hilbert.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de)
Thu, 9 Dec 1999 16:51:51 +0100 (MET)
James Simmons writes:
>
> > I concur: I have a couple of PMC (PCI mezzanine cadrs) modules with S3
> > chips which I plug on my MVME boards (PPC). I could not find any code that
> > would intialize them properly (bad to awful image quality) until I wrote
> > a small 486 SX emulator which executes the Video BIOS init routine.
> >
> > While many BIOS may have bugs, you can be fairly sure that the
> > initialization routine is basically correct (otherwise you could not even
> > see the Video BIOS copyright line properly).
>
> Ahhhh! Way are hardware companies so brain dead? Intels are not the only
> computers in the world. What do we do? Have the kernel have a built in x86
> emulator to setup brain dead hardware. I don't want to do that. What
> really needs to done is to ask these companies to release the info to set
> a mode without resorting to the BIOS.
>
I have already stated many times why this is not a reasonalbe apporach!
Just that much: Take a S3Virge for example: check how many card
manufacturers use it! Check how many different hw environments they
use (memory etc). The bios rom is the safest to store this information.
Besides if you have a modularized kernel you could run a boot utility
and then load you driver. Where is the problem?
Egbert.
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