From: Andrew Apted <ajapted@netspace.net.au>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 13:48:38 +1000

Re: FW: Cyrix MediaGX fbcon work

Jon writes:

>  	I'll try to clean up as much stuff as I can this weekend, but 
>  there are still some outstanding issues that need to be resolved before 
>  we can reasonably expect to have a chance of getting kgicon into the 
>  kernel if we ask.  Note that we do NOT need:
>  
>  * All the drivers working pristinely.  Look at how much work had to be 
>  done to fbcon after it got into the kernel.
>  
>  * kgicon drivers compiling into the kernel.  I think module-only should 
>  be OK for now.

OK.
  
>  * kgicon supporting all fbcon ioctls, ywrap/ypan, acceleration or other 
>  such nonessential features.

Getting ypan working will be really easy.
  
>  but we DO need:
>  
>  * The kgicon makefile system needs to be bridged in some way to the 
>  kernel makefile system.  Right now it is just sitting there under 
>  drivers/video.
>
>  * Mode setting should work.  This might be avoidable in a pinch, but it
>  will look bad and it probably is not that hard to implement.

No it shouldn't be too hard, it's just a matter of understanding both
KGI modesetting and fbcon modesetting API well enough...

>  * 4bpp fonts need to be handled correctly.  I noticed that Alan Cox's 
>  endianness fixes are in 2.1.111, which I just finished compiling.  I'll 
>  check it out.
>  
>  * All drivers should compile correctly.  This mostly means that the 
>  problems with missing .configure files and suchlike need to be fixed up.  
>  I can do this myself - I don't need to have a particular video card to 
>  compile its driver.
>  
>  	I will do as much as I can, but it would be really nice if other 
>  people would lend a hand.  Even just compilation reports would help.

Count me in.  I'll starting bashing on it too a.s.a.p.

>  > >  and I can't seem to get XF86_FBdev to accept any
>  > >  modes as valid
>  > 
>  > Could you give more information ?  Have you tried it on vesafb ?
>  
[SNIP]
>  	The XFree86_FBdev problem is just that I cannot get it to accept 
>  any modes in my /etc/XF86_Config file as valid.  I don't have the source, 
>  so I cannot determine if the problem lies with kgicon, the X server, the 
>  kernel or what.  You sent me the X server executable, so if you have ever 
>  gotten it to work with kgicon we can discount that.  My best guess would 
>  be that this problem is somehow related to the fact that kgicon doesn't 
>  handle mode setting correctly right now.

It should work without trying to set a mode, just by using the default
mode of the framebuffer.  Here is what I needed to put into
/etc/XF86Config :

   Section "Device"
       Identifier  "kgicon"
       VendorName  "Unknown"
       BoardName   "Unknown"
       speedup    "none"
   EndSection

   # XF86_FBDev on /dev/fb*
   
   Section "Screen"
       Driver      "fbdev"
       Device      "kgicon"
       Monitor     "COSMO"
       Subsection "Display"
           Depth       8
           Modes       "default"
           ViewPort    0 0
       EndSubsection
   EndSection

So try that, and hopefully it will work.

Cheers,
_____________________________________________  ____
                                               \  /
  Andrew Apted   <andrew@ggi-project.org>       \/