On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 15:55, Antony Stone wrote: > 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 your 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? > > Excuse the second posting to this thread so soon after my last, but I've > found a far more succinct way of expressing my point: > > If I go out and buy the latest whizz-bang graphics card, just released onto > the market, and plug it into my three year old PC, whose designers knew > nothing abut today's graphics cards, I expect to see a text console screen > when I turn it on. > > This means one of two things. Either: > > 1. there's a standard way for the motherboard Bios to initialise _any_ > graphics card, so it can initialise a new one it's never heard of before (and > presumably LinuxBios could do the same), or: >
Yes. > 2. there's a standard init call to the bios chip on the graphics card, which > knows how to set up that particular model, which again LinuxBios could > perform in exactly the same way when it starts up ? > Yes. > Is there a flaw somewhere in my reasoning ? > The flaw is the these standard are "Legacy BIOS standard". You have to provide various legacy BIOS functions since these VGA BIOS/init stuff will call back to system BIOS. LinuxBIOS just doest not or incompletely support these functions. Ollie _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
