Peter Petrakis [voodoo@alphadriven.org] wrote:
>
> Now that I think more about it that's not entirely true. There isn't
> VGA support in the bios emulator. It interprets video commands
> and redirects it to the console. I'll elaborate.
>
> First make sure you have v5.8 SRM installed and then find
> a NIC that SRM has drivers for and put it in the CS20.
BTW the cs20 has dual eepro100 onboard.
> I seem to recall that the bios emulator was a separate entity tacked
> onto
> the beginning on the SRM ROM image which SRM would then call back
> to when the functionality is needed. I had the idea once to hex edit out
> the bios emulator out of newer SRM versions and graft it onto something
> like the LX's SRM rom image. I never got around to it, maybe someone
> wants to try?
I might give it a shot, if all else fails. :)
> If you're really lucky you may see "vga0" listed in the output from
> "show bios" . Then you could theoretically "run bios vga0". Execute
> it and it should return control back to SRM console. The the card
> would be setup and X or dev/fb would have a chance. I don't know
> if you'll succeed in getting past the VGA bios initialization, it just
> may get stuck.
So vga0 is listed, and when I 'run bios vga0' I get this:
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003d40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0020000003d40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003d40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0020000003d40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003d40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003b40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0020000003b40100
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003b40101
Lost Error
No Devsel
Error detected by Pchip 1
PERROR = 0030000003b40100
No Devsel
This same set of messages is displayed when I 'run bios vga0', and then the
serial console hangs, as you mentioned it probably would above. Video modes
flip more than once but no text is printed. After 'run bios vga0' I have a
black screen and a blinking text cursor in the UL corner. Note that the halt
button does not return me to the SRM (so no way to boot linux after :().
Also on bootup there is a message that appears on the video output (but
not on the serial console):
Bios Emulation X2.01
Copyright (C) 1993-1999 Digital Equipment Corporation
All Rights Reserved
Patent Pending
This is SRM A5.8-81.
> >>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)
>
> Well, You could sell it back for a pretty penny,
Know anyone that wants to buy one? ;)
> Yup, SRM walked right past it. Wonder what lspci -v says about it's
> address space?
See previous post.
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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