Messages in this thread |  | | | From | "Kendall Bennett" <> | | Date | Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:36:04 -0700 | | Subject | Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT? |
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Gerd Knorr <kraxel@bytesex.org> wrote:
> "Kendall Bennett" <KendallB@scitechsoft.com> writes: > > > Note that the SNAPBoot code uses the x86emu BIOS emulator project as the > > core CPU emulation technology, and project we have been actively involved > > with for many years since the licensing on the project was changed to > > MIT/BSD style licensing and incorporated into the XFree86 project. > > > So what we would like to find out is how much interest there might be in > > both an updated VESA framebuffer console driver as well as the code for > > the Video card BOOT process being contributed to the maintstream kernel. > > It certainly would be nice to have that. Not nessesarely in the > kernel through, people tend not to like such complex stuff like > cpu emulation in the kernel for good reasons.
Well think about it as an x86 p-code interpreter then ;-) Kind of like a forth interpreter for Open Firmware but we use an x86 image instead.
> The kernel can run userspace apps (modprobe, hotplug), that > mechanism could be used to invoke a userspace tool which does the > boot / mode switching. Having it in userspace likely also makes it > easier to share code with X11.
I agree entirely, provided we can find a way to get this to run really early in the boot sequence. We need this for non-x86 embedded machines such as PowerPC and MIPS, not for x86 platforms where the BIOS can be called from the boot loader easily.
> Have you talked to the powermanagement guys btw.? One of the > major issues with suspend-to-ram is to get the graphics card back > online, and SNAPBoot might help to fix this too. I'm not sure a > userspace solution would work for *that* through.
That is a good point. Another good reason to have the code in there ;-)
Regards,
--- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~
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