Re: benh 2.4.21 kernel and radeonfb initialization
On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 21:25, Andreakis, Dean (MED) wrote:
> I have an iBook w/ Debian (sid), benh 2.4.21 kernel, an external CRT
> connected, XFree86 v4.3.0, and an ATI radeon mobility 7500 video chip.
> When I boot the system the very first thing I see is some messages
> concerning opening of the display etc. (its in a different font then the
> normal boot messges) and then the external crt connected and the
> internal lcd "flash white" and then the normal boot messages startup. I
> was wondering what these first messages are. They seem to be related
> somehow to the display mode initialization and I was also wondering if
> anyone knew if somehow at this stage some parameters are being passed to
> the radeonfb driver somehow or if this had something to do with
> openFirmware somehow. I just want to understand this mechanism because I
> noticed on earlier versions of the kernel my external crt was not
> enabled at this point but with the 2.4.21-benh kernel it does.
This is open firmware. The newer kernel ask Open Firmware to initialize
all connected displays. Current radeonfb doesn't really "use" that
feature as it's only able to properly drive one screen for now, but
doing that seem to help with at least some nivida cards to make sure
the card is fully initialized. Also, if you use offb, you'll actually
have 2 working framebuffers I beleive (I didn't test... and the color
palette will probably still be wrong on one of them)
Ben.
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