Hi ! I have some need that I'm not sure how to implement cleanly.
The problem is related to machines like the CRT iMacs (or eMacs). Those machines have a built-in monitor that is driven by a weird chip called "IVAD" (or "VCP" on older models) that is available via a motherboard i2c bus (not the video card's i2c bus). They can only deal with a fixed set of modes that cannot be obtained via DDC. Currently, setting up a list of appropriate modelines can be done by whatever distribution "config" tool, that is not my immediate problem (though it would be possible to imagine some way to provide a special EDID block to XFree based on detecting the machine type). The problem is that this "IVAD" cirtuit also controls the geometry and brightness of the screen, and should be configured properly after each mode setting. It has a EEPROM containing geometry settings for each of the supported modes, and upon mode change, we are supposed to "apply" the proper sets of geometry settings. I'm wondering how to "hook" something cleanly in XFree here. In order to not be Linux-specific, I'm thinking about moving the actual control of the IVAD chip to some userland tool (so the tool can be re-implemented for *BSDs, as whatever mecanism I make for accessing the motherboard i2c busses will be OS-specific). So what I would need would be some way for XFree to launch some kind of "helper" (app or script) upon mode change, providing as parameters the ID (PCI ID in my case) of the card and the modeline beeing applied. Ideally, I would need one call before changing the mode and one call after so I can cleanly turn off the IVAD during the actual mode change. Do this look feasible to you ? Makes any sense ? I don't know if XFree currently provides any "generic" way to call external tools (ala "system()") that is not OS-specific, though it would probably be easy to add some abstraction and implement it in the OS-specific part for OSes interested. Also, would this have to be called in each driver or does it make sense to have some core code call it before/after calling the driver to set the mode ? Regards, Ben. _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
