Re: fbdv/fbcon pending problems

[James Simmons]

> Question: Is fbdev supposed to work without BIOS? 

It depends on the driver. Unfortunely most hardware companies will not 
give you info on how to boot a card BIOS-less :-( I do have code for the 
XL ati card to boot BIOS-less but it needs some work.


> 
> I have an ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP in an Alpha AXPpci33,
> currently running with MILO as firmware/bootloader. 
> For several reasons I want to change to the original SRM firmware. 
> Unfortunately its intel_cpu/BIOS emulation locks up on the ATI BIOS. With
> the BIOS disabled the SRM succeeds loading the kernel. fbdev seems to
> initialize _something_, i.e. the monitor wakes up ans displays a stable
> repeating pattern of vertical stripes. But it hangs the machine after
> these lines on serial console:
> 
> fb0: ATY Mach64 frame buffer device on PCI
> Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@xxxxxxxxxxxx).
> 
> Booting the same kernel image (2.6.[13]) with MILO (which has a different
> cpu emulation that succeeds executing the BIOS) works fine with fbdev. 
> 
> Bye,
> Thorsten
> 
> 

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