Re: matroxfb on SMP alpha
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).
It was never meant to be a console machine, It was specially designed
for
mass clustering and to operate headless.
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)".
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.
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.
Peter
On Friday, January 24, 2003, at 02:44 PM, Bob McElrath wrote:
I just acquired a dual-processor CS20 alpha system, and I'm trying to
get matroxfb to work. (Note - this is a rackmount system and has no
keyboard or mouse, which complicates things)
Matroxfb seems to work fine using the debian kernel 2.4.20-smp, and I
can switch video modes and put text on the screen. However no program
which attempts to put graphics on the screen works. I have tried a
number of programs and while the program thinks its drawing something
to
the screen, the screen is black. I've tried changing vt's with chvt
and
no graphics is displaying on any vt.
So does anyone have matroxfb working on an SMP alpha?
Any suggestions on how to get this to work?
I've also tried mplayer's mga_vid, and that manages to display a
shifting green and purple blocky mess (on any input) at the proper
location, but again, no relation to the image/video I'm trying to
display.
Cheers,
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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