* RE: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia
2007-01-27 1:05 FW: " Russell McGuire
@ 2007-01-29 7:20 ` Bill Farrow
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Bill Farrow @ 2007-01-29 7:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: linuxppc-embedded
Russell McGuire wrote:
> Next I have plugged in a nVidia GeForce FX5200 PCI card,
> and compiled in the nvidafb driver.
>
> I can see clearly the PCI card is being detected and the
> nvidiafb driver is being registerd, it can even detect
> the monitor I have connected.
>
> However, when I enabled the kernel to use the framer
> buffer console, by compiling in that feature, it just=20
> 'seems' to hang after the console_init call.
Hi Russ,
I got to the same point last year with an ATI PCI card on a MPC8560
system. At this stage, I believe that to get the card displaying
graphics you will need to run the card's Video BIOS to initialise the
card correctly.
I'm guessing that you are running a PPC cpu :-) and that the FX5200 is a
consumer x86 graphics card. If so, the Video BIOS will be x86
instructions and you will need to run it with an emulator.
A company called SciTech is maintaining an x86emu project for doing
this:
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/dev/x86_emulator.html
I believe that Xorg also has a x86emu module, so I was going to see if I
could get an Xorg installation going and let it do it's magic.
For us, getting Xorg running would prove the graphics capability of our
platform and we can start writing a GUI. Then it would be just a matter
of getting uBoot to display something during boot to keep the customers
happy...
Bill
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* RE: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia
[not found] <mailman.1354.1170085533.9285.linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org>
@ 2007-01-30 2:37 ` Russell McGuire
2007-01-30 3:04 ` Xianghua Xiao
2007-01-30 3:46 ` Bill Farrow
0 siblings, 2 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Russell McGuire @ 2007-01-30 2:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: linuxppc-embedded
Bill / ALL
Thanks for the info. Looking around I see that there is some aged code in
the U-boot tree under the MIA board that is a BIOS emulator. Seems like a
huge mess to get a video card to turn on.
I am using a Freescale MPC8360 so yes, ppc architecture and thus the
problems with BIOS emulation with PCI.
Do we still need a BIOS emulator if we don't want to run the VGA console
during bootup, but only for post boot?
I.e. does the NVIDIA driver have enough smarts to initialize the card after
Linux is 100% booted up? I really only need to be able to use the graphics
card for user applications, and booting with it is not a requirement. If
somehow I could boot with the serial console, and then run a user mode
application that initiated the card?
-Russ
Russell McGuire wrote:
> Next I have plugged in a nVidia GeForce FX5200 PCI card,
> and compiled in the nvidafb driver.
>
> I can see clearly the PCI card is being detected and the
> nvidiafb driver is being registerd, it can even detect
> the monitor I have connected.
>
> However, when I enabled the kernel to use the framer
> buffer console, by compiling in that feature, it just
> 'seems' to hang after the console_init call.
Hi Russ,
I got to the same point last year with an ATI PCI card on a MPC8560
system. At this stage, I believe that to get the card displaying
graphics you will need to run the card's Video BIOS to initialise the
card correctly.
I'm guessing that you are running a PPC cpu :-) and that the FX5200 is a
consumer x86 graphics card. If so, the Video BIOS will be x86
instructions and you will need to run it with an emulator.
A company called SciTech is maintaining an x86emu project for doing
this:
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/dev/x86_emulator.html
I believe that Xorg also has a x86emu module, so I was going to see if I
could get an Xorg installation going and let it do it's magic.
For us, getting Xorg running would prove the graphics capability of our
platform and we can start writing a GUI. Then it would be just a matter
of getting uBoot to display something during boot to keep the customers
happy...
Bill
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia
2007-01-30 2:37 ` Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia Russell McGuire
@ 2007-01-30 3:04 ` Xianghua Xiao
2007-01-30 3:46 ` Bill Farrow
1 sibling, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Xianghua Xiao @ 2007-01-30 3:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Russell McGuire; +Cc: linuxppc-embedded
I got a patch against 2.6 kernel from Scitechsoft last year and we
brought up ATI card on PPC platform using that. U-boot shares the same
emulator as the one Scitechsoft uses however the latter is a newer
version. Yes you can use an unchanged u-boot(i.e. no video emulation
under u-boot at all), merge the video-patch to your kernel to use ATI
card directly. You can boot with serial port then the kernel will
activate video console and x-windows.
if you need the patch, I can send it to you offline.
xianghua
Russell McGuire wrote:
> Bill / ALL
>
> Thanks for the info. Looking around I see that there is some aged code in
> the U-boot tree under the MIA board that is a BIOS emulator. Seems like a
> huge mess to get a video card to turn on.
>
> I am using a Freescale MPC8360 so yes, ppc architecture and thus the
> problems with BIOS emulation with PCI.
>
> Do we still need a BIOS emulator if we don't want to run the VGA console
> during bootup, but only for post boot?
>
> I.e. does the NVIDIA driver have enough smarts to initialize the card after
> Linux is 100% booted up? I really only need to be able to use the graphics
> card for user applications, and booting with it is not a requirement. If
> somehow I could boot with the serial console, and then run a user mode
> application that initiated the card?
>
> -Russ
>
>
>
> Russell McGuire wrote:
>
>> Next I have plugged in a nVidia GeForce FX5200 PCI card,
>> and compiled in the nvidafb driver.
>>
>> I can see clearly the PCI card is being detected and the
>> nvidiafb driver is being registerd, it can even detect
>> the monitor I have connected.
>>
>> However, when I enabled the kernel to use the framer
>> buffer console, by compiling in that feature, it just
>> 'seems' to hang after the console_init call.
>>
>
> Hi Russ,
> I got to the same point last year with an ATI PCI card on a MPC8560
> system. At this stage, I believe that to get the card displaying
> graphics you will need to run the card's Video BIOS to initialise the
> card correctly.
>
> I'm guessing that you are running a PPC cpu :-) and that the FX5200 is a
> consumer x86 graphics card. If so, the Video BIOS will be x86
> instructions and you will need to run it with an emulator.
>
> A company called SciTech is maintaining an x86emu project for doing
> this:
> http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/dev/x86_emulator.html
>
> I believe that Xorg also has a x86emu module, so I was going to see if I
> could get an Xorg installation going and let it do it's magic.
>
> For us, getting Xorg running would prove the graphics capability of our
> platform and we can start writing a GUI. Then it would be just a matter
> of getting uBoot to display something during boot to keep the customers
> happy...
>
>
> Bill
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linuxppc-embedded mailing list
> Linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs•org
> https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxppc-embedded
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* RE: Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia
2007-01-30 2:37 ` Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia Russell McGuire
2007-01-30 3:04 ` Xianghua Xiao
@ 2007-01-30 3:46 ` Bill Farrow
1 sibling, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Bill Farrow @ 2007-01-30 3:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: linuxppc-embedded
Russell McGuire wrote:
> Thanks for the info. Looking around I see that there
> is some aged code in the U-boot tree under the MIA
> board that is a BIOS emulator. Seems like a huge mess
> to get a video card to turn on.
Yes, I came across that code in my investigation as well. As Xiao points
out in his email, this code is an earlier version of the SciTech code.
I didn't get around to comparing it with the Xorg code either.
> I am using a Freescale MPC8360 so yes, ppc
> architecture and thus the problems with BIOS emulation
> with PCI.
>
> Do we still need a BIOS emulator if we don't want to
> run the VGA console during bootup, but only for post
> boot?
I'm pretty sure that you don't need uboot to do the emulation if you
don't need graphics at this point. As long as you are happy to wait
until Xorg has started before you can display anything.
> I.e. does the NVIDIA driver have enough smarts to
> initialize the card after Linux is 100% booted up?
> I really only need to be able to use the graphics card
> for user applications, and booting with it is not a
> requirement. If somehow I could boot with the serial
> console, and then run a user mode application that
> initiated the card?
I think you will find that the Xorg driver will use it's own x86emu to
initialise the card properly when X starts. I haven't confirmed this
myself yet, I guess I need to look at the Xorg code and then actually
try it out. This was the impression that I got from talking to one of
the video driver hackers at Linux.Conf.au a couple of weeks back,
specifically about running x86 graphics cards on PPC.
Are you able to get your kernel to mount a PPC distro via NFS so that
you have a full Xorg installation to test with, without having to build
it yourself ?
Bill
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
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2007-01-30 2:37 ` Boot w/ VGA console - PCI nvidia Russell McGuire
2007-01-30 3:04 ` Xianghua Xiao
2007-01-30 3:46 ` Bill Farrow
2007-01-27 1:05 FW: " Russell McGuire
2007-01-29 7:20 ` Bill Farrow
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