Re: kernel-image-2.2.13-eb164 milo problems

[Nikita Schmidt <cetus@snowball.ucd.ie>]

On Wednesday,  9 Feb, David Huggins-Daines wrote:
> 
> I seem to remember reading that the problem is a lot of SVGA cards don't
> actually start up in VGA mode and thus require some kind of proprietary
> bit-banging (done, naturally, in their on-board BIOS) to get them there.
> 

The idea was based on the fact that since flasing MILO is not supported
and not recommended, MILO is supposed to start after the previous console
has initialised the card.  The MILO's task then is just to switch the card
into text mode, which should be possible on any VGA-compatible card
(assuming the graphics modes used by ARC/AlphaBIOS/ARCSBIOS are standard
VGA modes).  If MILO fails, it means either that the card is not fully
compatible, or, more likely, that the procedure used by MILO is flawed.

There is still a reason why MILO might want to be able to cold-initialise
the video card: to recover after a segfaulted X server.  This is, however,
too rare an event to be specifically catered for.

Nikita