Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267378AbUJRVHS (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:07:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267405AbUJRVHE (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:07:04 -0400 Received: from [69.4.201.55] ([69.4.201.55]:26768 "EHLO bitworks.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267378AbUJRVE5 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:04:57 -0400 Message-ID: <41742FF2.9090409@bitworks.com> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:04:50 -0500 From: Richard Smith User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: KendallB@scitechsoft.com Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fbdev-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Generic VESA framebuffer driver and Video card BOOT? References: <4173B865.26539.117B09BD@localhost> <4173C981.13925.11BDE111@localhost> In-Reply-To: <4173C981.13925.11BDE111@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1570 Lines: 38 Kendall Bennett wrote: > Richard Smith wrote: > > Good, so my assumption was incorrect which I am happy about. Since it > makes the work we did more useful ;-) > > Anyway in your case do you need diagnostic messages just from the kernel > or from the firmware as well? Firmware messages are the most critical since none of the app code is running yet and can't self-heal or cry for help. Some units boot off of a compact flash. Try as we might to make these babies robust they do fail. So in that case the boot message from the firmware needs to be displayed. In other cases the system net boots which increases the firmware error message level by about a factor of 10. > To get it in the firmware the video boot > code would need to be ported there (U-Boot has a version of it already, > but it is the only firmware I am aware of that supports this). LinuxBIOS has some suport for this. Not by emulation though. It uses the bios from the BOCHS project as a payload. Some glue drops the system back into real mode and runs the BOCHS bios which scans the legacy regions for ROM expansion modules. So as long as I copy my video bios up int 0x0C0000 prior to this I get video. Otherwise I have to wait until X comes up and soft-boots the display device. -- Richard A. Smith - 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/