Hello Mark and Xpert list

Do you happen to have an email address for Egbert Eich handy?

Actually I already have the two video cards working as I suggested
in my previos email. To do so took a lot of work. And to do so I 
needed to get a datasheet from ATI to accomplish control of the AGP 
card via my kernel module. This limits me to the ATI Radeon 7500 card
only. I would like to branch out to other cards as well in case
ATI can not continue provide me with docs for their newer cards. 
So now I am wondering if their exists a way to write to the legacy
ports using an address something like 

base_address + legacy_port_offset

where legacy address would possibly be obtained from PCI config-space.

Any help appreciated,
Daniel

>> Hello Expert lixt
>> 
>> Does anyone know if there is a standard way to access legacy VGA
>>registers through mappe-memory registers in most video cards. I

>   It\\\'s not standard.  I think nearly all cards can do it, and
>there are some similarities between a subset of cards, but there\\\'s
>no standard way, either in where the registers are mapped or 
>how they are laid out within that mapping.

>> am asking this question because in woul like to be able to driver
>> a PCI card with the normal Xserver while driving an AGP card with
>> a custom driver. The custom driver would make use of legacy addresses
>> but doing this without altering the behavior of both cards is
>> my problem.
>> 

>  As two separate processes this will be difficult.  Even for
>an XFree86 driver that can manage without doing any port I/O,
>and many are that way, you still need legacy access to save
>the fonts.  Perhaps if the Xserver was on the secondary card
>so it didn\\\'t have to save fonts, it might never need to touch
>the legacy vga.  But still, there probably needs to be some
>X-server hacking to keep XFree86 from disabling access to your
>vga card.  I think in many cases it probably proactively pulls
>the other card off of the bus to keep it from interfering with
>the operating X-server.  Egbert Eich is the expert in this area.
>XFree86 actually has a mechanism where it can run N cards that 
>only do port I/O to legacy registers simultaneously.  It does
>this by enabling and disabling access at appropriate times.
>But these are all managed within the same process so it can
>keep track of this stuff.  A third party would complicate things.


>                       Mark.

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