Announce (and questions): Linux 2.2 VGA 640x480x16 framebuffer driver

Ben Pfaff (pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 00:29:23 -0500 (EST)


For use mainly by graphical installation disks, I have written a
`least common denominator' 640x480x16 framebuffer for VGA and
compatible cards. It is essentially complete. You can find it at
http://pfaffben.user.msu.edu/~blp
and http://www.msu.edu/user/pfaffben

To use it, patch a 2.2.0 kernel pre-patch with vga16.patch, then
select `VGA 16-color graphics console' and `VGA 16-color planar
support' in configuration. When you reboot, you must specify vga=274
(which is 0x112 in hex) to kick your card into the proper video mode
for use by VGA16 (I have not implemented mode-setting yet).

Question: does anyone know why the entire screen turns white before
the kernel messages start scrolling up? I hunted through the kernel
source code for this, but couldn't quite figure it out.

Additional comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Ben.

-- 
"To the engineer, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and
 feature-poor toys." --Scott Adams

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