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Message-ID: <004501c09516$ddf03520$23f9423e@avenger>
From: "Henrik Stokseth" <hstokset@privat.cybercity.no>
To: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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Subject: Re: Programmatically probe video chipset
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:11:40 +0100
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Paul Powell <moloch16@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is there an API or other means to determine what video
> card, namely the chipset, that the user has installed
> on his machine?

for PCI and AGP cards you can scan through the bus and fetch all
vendor:device numbers of type 7 (vga compatible) IIRC and then match them
against a database. i have the code for this if you're interested.
for ISA cards that has PnP functionality you can get the vendor string using
a PnP interrupt service routine, I have never actually done that but i know
that it is possible.
But for most cards you can use the VESA VBE API to fetch the information,
you will have to do this from real/virtual mode afaik.
If you're not interrested in programming hardware you can use the pci
interface in /proc instead which is the best solution if you're running
linux. ;o)

-henrik


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