On Wednesday 11 September 2002 7:22 am, Steve M. Gehlbach wrote: > > > Maybe someone knows if alphanumeric mode setup is via the standard VGA > > > register set on most modern VGA cards. > > > > I am afraid you are wrong. For modern VGA cards, there is actually no > > alphanumeric mode. These alphanumeric mode were simulated by BIOS or > > drivers. The worst thing, if you have no documents about these extended > > registers, you have no way to drive the clock gen for Dot clock, Hsync, > > Vsync. > > Are you saying that it is not possible to use a text console with Linux > (vgacon.c) with modern VGA cards (BIOS mode 3)? Only framebuffer? Or are > you saying that without extra information (ie, the BIOS or the manuals) you > can't init it into mode 3? I don't understand your answer. > > I thought most vga cards were register compatible with the legacy VGA > register set, only that there were a lot of other (sometimes secret) things > to setup. Is this wrong?
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this what the Bios chip on the VGA card itself is for (in the case where you have a physical card plugged into the motherboard, and not an all-in-one integrated motherboard chipset) ? I mean, surely that's the reason why, when you turn on a 'standard' PC with a normal graphics card and a normal Bios, you see the starup messages for the graphics card *first*, and *then* you see the Bios logo and config screen....? Couldn't LinuxBios simply call the appropriate init code in a graphics card Bios in order to get a text console, and then carry on afterwards in the same way a normal boot loader would ? Antony. -- 90% of network problems are routing problems. 9 of the remaining 10% are routing problems in the other direction. The remaining 1% might be something else, but check the routing anyway. _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
