Dealing with PC graphics cards (was Re: X or KDE freeze system)

[Martin <inkubus@interalpha.co.uk>]

> I am
> wondering if there's possible to use the VGA BIOS emulation support
> used in Bochs (http://bochs.sf.net) to do anything usual with (cheap!)
> PCI video cards on Linux/SPARC. I *do* need dual head and graphics
> improvement on the U10, and I can't afford Sun hardware :(
I'm in a very similar boat.  I have several dual and quad head PCI
graphics cards I'd like to use with both some Linux/x86 machines and
with Linux/SPARC boxen.  One of the problems with this is although they
are standard graphics chips (and as I understand it you can configure X
to use certain memory/PCI addresses so they could be used) they need
something from the BIOS to get them going - PC BIOS don't seem to get
them running correctly and obviously OpenBoot won't touch them.  I was
thinking of hand disassembling the BIOS code from them and then
translating it itno something more sensible and / or looking at the
initalisation code in the windows drivers.

This seems to be the only limit on being able to run an arbitrary number
of graphics cards (even if they are just in bog standard VGA emulation
mode or even if they are console only) in any box.  Unless ofcourse
anyone knows differently... in the breif research I've done apart from
some arcane pokes to the driver chips to set them up (either from the
drivers or the BIOS on the card) I can't see any reason why this
wouldn't work....

Cheers,
 - Martin
 
-- 
Martin
inkubus@interalpha.co.uk
"Seasons change, things come to pass"