Peter Petrakis [voodoo@alphadriven.org] wrote:
> I'm sorry but if you want to run a graphics card in that machine, It
> will probably never work. There is no x86 bios emulator support in
> the firmware. It was removed to conserve space and make room for the
> linux in rom (never finished).
So then it will never be able to initialize most PCI devices? That's a
crappy design... How many PCI devices don't have a BIOS?
Wouldn't the bios emulator be part of SRM? Is there anything I can do
from the SRM to initialize the card?
> It was never meant to be a console machine, It was specially designed
> for mass clustering and to operate headless.
Well, I have a backup use for it if I can't get it to display anything.
(I got it cheap off ebay for video encoding)
> Your only hope is to somehow get the Xfree bios emulator to set up
> the card properly. Last time I checked, their bios emulator still
> depends on the previous firmware to have "done the right thing (tm)".
XFree86 hangs on startup without ever doing anything to the screen. It
does say:
(WW) MGA(0): Video BIOS info block not detected!
> Keyboard/mouse support may be possible at the OS level using a USB card
> but you'll have no control at the firmware level.
>
> In an ideal world. A new firmware could be written that supported x86
> bios emulation and newer devices.
>
> The best use you could get out of this thing is to run it on the
> network and an open a X session to it.
Not useful for displaying video. The bandwidth requirements are
prohibitive.
> Finally if you bought this from someone and they told you VGA would
> work in it, they're a bold faced liar. Demand your money back.
Nobody told me that, it's my own fault.
Thanks,
Bob McElrath [Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics]
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the
freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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