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Jon Smirl wrote: > On 5/23/06, Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote: >> Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> > 1) Running the video ROM at boot to reset cards, emu86 >> >> Jon, how many times am I going to have to tell you that this won't work? >> The video ROM is not always present on laptop hardware, and even when it >> is it may jump into sections of ROM that have vanished since boot. >> In the long run, graphics drivers need to know how to program cards from >> scratch rather than depending on 80x25 text mod being there for them. > > 1) I didn't put a lot of detail into the line item but you only need > to use the ROM to reset secondary cards on x86 architectures. Primary > cards are always initialized by the system BIOS so you don't need to > run their ROM on boot. I think the only way to get a secondary card > into a laptop is through a PCMCIA slot and I've only seen one PCMCIA > video card. I wonder, could this secondary initialization be done by the bootloader? A standard pc bios don't initialize extra graphichs cards, and making a custom bios isn't easy. But the boot loader (lilo/grub) runs in a mode where calling into a bios should be easy. Or will there be a lot of trickery in mapping the secondary (and tertiary...) card bioses somewhere in order to run them? Helge Hafting - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||||
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