Re: PCI Video Cards
On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Rolf Schatzmann wrote:
> If you run the app xviddetect on a mac linux box it shows you the pci
> devices it can see.
>
> It can see any pci devices and they don't have to be made for mac, I know
> this because I have 2 additional nics in my 8500, one generic Realtek 8029
> and a Digital Decchip 21142. Neither of these works under mac os, they both
> work fine under linux.
Unfortunately life is not that simple. Almost all `PC' graphics stuff assumes
the card was initialized by the video BIOS code in the BIOS ROM on the video
card. For network cards, this is not the case.
> As I understand it now (having just got accelerated X to work on a Blue &
> White G3) its actually X not the kernel that needs to have a driver to
> support a pci video card to get accelerated video in X.
The kernel does have a driver for VGA text, or graphics through a frame buffer
device.
> So I'm thinking why not just throw any non-mac PCI video card that has
> drivers in X into the box and try to get X to use it for accelerated video?
>
> In theory i should be able to have 2 displays this way, one for accelerated
> X and the original one. Having got familiar with XF86config it looks as
> though you can specify any video card and monitor in there.
>
> Can someone who knows tell me whether this might work and if so what PC PCI
> video card i should get (ie. what works well on an i386 box)?
It won't work with most cards. If you use a card for which a frame buffer
device exists that can initialize the card from scratch (matroxfb can in most
cases), it will work. Else it won't work, unless you find a way to initialize
the card using some helper application.
I have an ATI Mach64 RAGE II+ and an S3 Trio64V+ in my PPC CHRP box.
The ATI has a Mac ROM (with Open Firmware code) and works out of the box.
The S3 has a PC BIOS ROM (with Intel machine code) and needs initialization.
I can initialize it to a VGA text mode by emulating the Intel machine code
though, but currently the emulator doesn't work with all cards. And VGA text
mode is not everything. Vga16fb also works (nice for virtual consoles on a
second head), but I haven't managed to get anything useful out of it when
speaking about decent graphics (yes, I have to retry the new S3 Trio frame
buffer device).
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
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