With the open source announcement of ATI, sometimes we ask is OGP still needed. This thread just remind me why OGP is still worth the effort.
They could open the full documentation for you to write a driver but they hide a lot of stuff in the bios which I don't foresee they will open up anytime soon and instead they might need to move more and more stuff (those need to be kept secret) into the bios. >From my experience (a couple years ago), all ATI's chips newer than the Radeon 9000 has some kind of mechanism to read the bios and lock up your machine (or have all kind of weird behavior) if the bios is tempered even the bios code is not excuted at all. Why? Because they sell cheaper versions of the card by disabling pipelines in the bios. The chip won't function properly without certain data in the bios. They certainly don't want anyone to buy the cheaper cards and unlock the pipelines with a hacked VGA bios. Don't know if this has changed since then. This is nothing new though. Remember back in the 80's, Intel just disable the co-processor on the 486DX and sell it as 486SX. AMD had similar deal I assume. With OGP, there will be no such thing. Every bit of the hardware will be utilized to it's full potential. You have the chief engineers here to answer your questions so you can optimize the hack out of your driver. You definitely don't need the bios for it to work correctly (weather as a second head or on other platforms). The bios will be fully opened, so if you want a custom splash screen, feel free to hack it. The list go on ..... Andy On 10/31/07, Sebastien Bourdeauducq <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > I've heard that some non-x86 workstations also faced this kind of problem, > and > had to implement an x86 emulator to be able to run the firmware some PCI > cards shipped with. > > If you have enough time and memory on your board, maybe you could do > something > with QEmu. > > Or if you have access to the precise specs of the VGA card, write a > dedicated > driver... but this breaks compatibility. > > Sebastien > > > On Wednesday 31 October 2007 16:18:48 Rupesh Kumar wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > I got ATI Radeon Card which is working on PC as Secondary VGA display > > adapter. > > When i try this card on my ARM system it is failing to detect the > videoram > > and failing with the following error. > > radeonfb (0000:00:02.0): Found 0k of SDRAM 64 bits wide videoram > > adeonfb (0000:00:02.0): cannot map FB > > radeonfb: probe of 0000:00:02.0 failed with error -5 > > > > After some time on google i have found that this error can be solved by > > running vbetool (which runs the video BIOS). > > This is completely killing my idea of running it on ARM Board. > > > > My goal is to make a VGA Card work on ARM System which doesnt support > > legacy VGA Address range. > > Can anyone please clarify me whether this is feasible or not. > > Anybody have ever tried this kind of setup. > > > > Please help me. > > > > Regards > > Rupesh > > > > On 10/26/07, Rupesh Kumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Thanks for your prompt reply Paul > > > > > > > My goal is to make this card work on a ARM System. My > System doesn't > > > > > > > > > support VGA Legacy address decoding. So i am expecting that if a > card > > > > > > > > works > > > > > > > > > as secondary VGA Adapter then it can be portable to ARM System. Am > i > > > > > correct ?? > > > > > > > > Probably, but there may be other issues. > > > > > > What kind of issues ? Is it VGA BIOS,or driver issues. > > > > > > I'm surprised the your Cirrus Logic card is failing, they're one of > the > > > > > > > better > > > > documented card series. Maybe the code has just bitrotted. > > > > > > I checked this card in Windows . It works if it is taken as primary > > > display. > > > if it is taken as secondary then the driver initialization is failing. > > > > > > May be this card is old and may not work as secondary VGA. Just > kidding > > > !!!!! (Showing VGA BIOS 2005). > > > > > > I have checked linux cirrusfb driver and it is directly accessing the > > > Legacy VGA Range. (drivers/video/cirrusfb.c) > > > This implies to me that this card can never be supported as Secondary > VGA > > > with this linux driver.(I dont know how X Server act on it) > > > > > > Please correct me. > > > > > > Regards > > > Rupesh > > > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) >
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