On my Dell Optiplex GX260 (i82845G/GL video), recent DRMKMS kernels produce a working text display, so long as the video display is the console. If the console is on the serial port, the video is put in a mode which my CRT cannot display, although one may type blind and log in.
In either case, starting the X server with no "xorg.conf" file, auto-detecting the intel driver, panics the machine. For comparison, I set up an installation completely devoid of any "native" Xorg files and built "modular" Xorg from pkgsrc. With any kernel-- GENERIC, DRMKMS, or NO_DRM--and without an "xorg.conf" the X server selects the "vesa" driver over the "intel" driver (although it is loaded). With a minimal "xorg.conf" to communicate monitor capabilities, the display is left black, although in a mode acceptable to the CRT. With GENERIC/NO_DRM kernels, one can switch to text VTs and back to the X display. With the DRMKMS kernel, switching to a "text" VT shows a true VGA text-mode blinking underline cursor at the top left of the screen. Switching back to the X VT results in a black screen although if a terminal window had focus before switching away, one may type blindly in that window to execute commands (i.e., reboot the machine). Meanwhile, on my stable of i82810e-based machines (two Dell Optiplex GX110s and an HP Pavilion 501c(?)), the patch posted at the end of xsrc/48344 allows the GX110s to finally run an X server on netbsd-6 (see also pullup-6 #1105). Consequently, r1.111 or later of src/sys/dev/pci/agp_i810.c allows the GX110s to run an X server on netbsd-current (DRMKMS, GENERIC, or even NO_DRM since they never had DRM/DRI support anyway). One glitch is that the xf86-video-intel driver in -current, when compiled with GCC 4.8.3, causes stippled regions to render as black. Examples include: X server root window when using "-retro" option XTerm and XConsole scroll bars twm active window title bars/inactive window frames root window after 'xsetroot -mod x y ...' command Building the xf86-video-intel driver with GCC 4.5.4 (with SNA code disabled to work around an internal compiler error) and copying the "/usr/X11R7/lib/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so*" files into the otherwise GCC 4.8.3-built installation produces properly-rendered stippled regions. The SNA code is not the source of the problem as building the SNA-disabled driver with GCC 4.8.3 still renders stippled regions as black. Using an installation with no trace of "native" Xorg, the pkgsrc/modular Xorg works well and produces properly-rendered stippled regions using "x11/xf86-video-intel" (all built with GCC 4.8.3). Also, a GCC 4.8.3-built release with the xf86-video-intel driver reverted to the version before the update, as described in: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2014/04/03/msg024613.html works properly on both i810e and i845GL systems (UMS) and correctly renders stippled regions. -- |/"\ John D. Baker, KN5UKS NetBSD Darwin/MacOS X |\ / jdbaker[snail]mylinuxisp[flyspeck]com OpenBSD FreeBSD | X No HTML/proprietary data in email. BSD just sits there and works! |/ \ GPGkeyID: D703 4A7E 479F 63F8 D3F4 BD99 9572 8F23 E4AD 1645
