Re: PC graphic adapters on Mac Hardware
On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 09:03:42AM +0200, Ole-Egil Hvitmyren wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
>
> >On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 05:05:04PM +0200, Rose Humphrey wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Le dimanche, 3 aoû 2003, à 09:45 Europe/Paris, Sven Luther a écrit :
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 03:21:41AM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>No, as I said, this _won't_ work in general. Some low level
> >>>>initialization of the card usually needs to be done by the firmware.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Unless you port the XFree86 bios interpreter to work on powerpc or
> >>>something such. I think some experiments where already made, but i
> >>>don't
> >>>know if it is conclusive. The idea is to have the int10/vbe/whatever it
> >>>is read the bios, and then pass it to an x86 emulator to execute it and
> >>>intialize the card.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Successfully done with the AmigaOne, where the graphics card is
> >>intialised using a x86 emuletion built into the firmware for that very
> >>purpose. The trouble is, the gentleman wants to put the card into a
> >>Beige Mac, and I rather think he's stuck with an expensive ATI Mac card.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >No, that is not the same thing. The idea is to have XFree86 run the
> >emulator to initialize the card at X startup time. This can be done
> >independently of whatever the firmware is capable of and is used on x86
> >to initialize second heads and such.
> >
> >
>
> That would mean you have NO idea what's going on until X has started.
> Not my favourite solution. I think the framebuffer drivers in Linux
> should have the possibility to run the emulator long before X starts ;-)
Yep, that is true, it would only work for a second card or if you have a
serial console or something such. You cannot do the same trick with the
linux framebuffer device, since there you would be running the emulator
in kernel land, which seems to cause some problems. I don't know the
detail though, but see the archives of the linux-fbdve list if you are
interested.
> But the point still stands. If it's possible in the AmigaOne firmware,
> why is it so god damn hard to do it in the framebuffer driver or the X
> driver?
Because nobody has taken the time to do it ? Or if they did, which i
believe is true, they have not cleaned up the patch and submitted it.
At least for X, as said, the fbdev cause other problems, and i doubt you
would get an x86 emulator into the kernel.
Friendly,
>
> --
> AmigaOne dev list FAQ (when I say F, I mean F):
> http://www.samfundet.no/~olegil/amiga/
> Some "useful" packages:
> http://www.samfundet.no/~olegil/debian/powerpc/description.txt
>
>
>
>
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