[plug] Framebuffer problem

[Peter Wright]

On Mon, May 29, 2000 at 01:21:56PM +0800, Matt Kemner wrote:
> On Mon, 29 May 2000, Peter Wright wrote:
> > And I even played around with the vga settings - I tried to give
> > VGA 0301 (just as it suggests in the Framebuffer HOWTO), but it
> > told me that wasn't a valid mode. Which would be consistent if the
> > framebuffer wasn't loaded.
> 
> Actually they have nothing to do with each other. I don't know why
> the howto suggests 0301 because it's never been a valid mode on any
> system I've used :)

 From the documentation linux/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt :

     |  640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
 ----+-------------------------------------
 256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305    0x307   
 32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316    0x319   
 64k |  0x311    0x314    0x317    0x31A   
 16M |  0x312    0x315    0x318    0x31B   

Top left-hand corner.

> the vga= stuff is just the normal console stuff.
>  
> > So I did get a message about the MTRR, but SFA about the vesafb.
> > :-/ It's certainly starting to look like the framebuffer stuff
> > just flat out isn't in the kernel. Strange, as I would have
> > thought that the /proc/devices having an fb device listed would
> > mean it _is_ in the kernel.... Can anyone correct me on this?
> 
> Maybe fb is silent if it doesn't find any valid framebuffer devices.
> what gfx card are you using, and what fb drivers did you compile in?

Cirrus Logic: CL-GD7548. I compiled in the generic vesa 2.0 card
support.

I can't find out for sure if the chipset is VESA 2.0 compliant (Cirrus
website is useless, they say they've shoved all their "legacy" video
device support off to another place which is equally useless).

I'm not sure what the kernel should do if you try to use a VESA 1.2
device with the Linux framebuffer.... maybe exactly as above? I would
have liked there to be an explicit error message, something like

vesafb: Error - not VESA 2.0 compliant.

but I just don't know.

>  - Matt

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

--
"So here's a picture of reality: (picture of circle with lots of squiggles in 
it) As we all know, reality is a mess."

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)