From: Jon M. Taylor <taylorj@ecs.csus.edu>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 21:25:59 -0700 (PDT)

RE: Setting up FBCON/KGICON

On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, David Waite wrote:

>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: Jon M. Taylor [mailto:taylorj@ecs.csus.edu]
> > On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, David Waite wrote:
> >
> > > Can someone please explain how to get these working?
> >
> > 	Symlink the include directory to /usr/src/linux/include/kgi and
> > the kgi directory to /usr/src/linux/drivers/video/kgi.  Then
> > you should be
> > able to go into the video/kgi directory and make the KGI
> > drivers as your
> > normally would.  You will end up with a file called kgicon.o,
> > which can be
> > insmodded into any 2.1.107+ kernel.  You will also need the con2fbmap
> > utility to migrate the consoles from the old driver to your
> > new one.  Let
> > me know if you need it and I'll mail it to you.
> >
> > > Kgicon isn't even
> > > documented from what I see;
> >
> > 	No, not really |-<.  But really, it is mostly the same
> > as the old
> > KGI except that you don't have to patch the kernel and the
> > module name is
> > different.  And there's only one mode right now.
> >
> 
> I tried to get things working with 1.0.109 Saturday night, the VGA stuff put
> me in an unusable graphics mode and then the kernel oopsed. It could be my
> compiler though (egcs snapshot patched with pgcc ;))

	The default mode is hardwired to 640x400x8, which VGA cannot do. 
it should have gracefully failed to load the module, though.  Can you turn
on debugging and send me the oops trace? 

> BTW where do I send bug reports for the devel kernels? The sound drivers
> have a number of problems (soundcore.o will cause a kernel oops if it is the
> only thing inserted, and it gets incremented rather than sound.o when the
> actual card drivers are inserted, making it impossible to remove)

	The maintainer of the code in question, or the linux-kernel
mailing list of you don't know. 
 
> > > Does fbcon let you get vga graphics? Or just vga text?
> >
> > 	Graphics, specifically 640x400 in 8-bit or greater.
> 
> Ahh, only 640x400 res?

	For now.  The idea was to get 640x400x4, which every card can do,
working as the default mode.  It sort of does, actually - if you change
the default mode to 4bpp, you get a somewhat recognizeable display but the
fonts are garbled.  It is an endianness issue with the 4bpp text rendering
stuff in fbcon.  Looks like the actual hardware programming works just
fine though. 
 

---
'Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in 
becoming one with God.'
	- Scientist G. Richard Seed