> > AFAIK the Indy/SGI Graphics Cards are even less/more - They dont present > > a memory block to the OS but only an OpenGL pipe. But i havnt > > had a look at it. > > > > The "Indy" console (Which is only available for the kernel) is > > based on the Prom - Therefor it is called "promcon.c" - There is > > a ARC Firmware callback for getting and printing characters. > > See arch/mips/arc/promcon.c and arch/mips/sgi/kernel/promcon.c or > > something.
This is what you're using for the Indigo. We have specifications for the newport chipset that can be found in most Indys. You can do a lot of things with the newport chipset such as DMA transfers directly from memory. For the newport console that's in drivers/char/video currently use a method where we set a window with the size of a character and then repeatedly set a register on the newport to different color values. There are also functionality for drawing lines and some other goodies built in. A framebuffer could be emulated, but it would be rather slow. Ulf
