Re: Re: [Lnx-bbc-arch] Research build [email protected]/lnx-bbc--gray-project--0.1--patch-11 uploaded to http://bccd.cs.uni.edu/bbc-images/

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Seth David Schoen wrote:

>
> I think I recall that a lack of support for i810 was why we made the
> default boot non-framebuffer.  Does the availability of i810 support
> mean we should go back in the opposite direction?

There are two intel "winmodem" cards that are flooding the market (in
Dell's new lines, especially).  These are the i810 and intelfb driven
chipsets.  I call them winmodem cards because they have no on-board RAM,
but rather use (steal) the system ram.

These cards are nowhere near vesa compliant, so the approach that the
LNX-BBC takes is still the most appropriate IMHO.

What I've done for the Bootable Cluster CD fork is to have a boot option
for i810 or intelfb that (a) boots in non-fb mode and (b) modprobe's with
a follow-up fbset to get framebuffer working.

I found that if I tried to load the i810 or intelfb modules automatically
and gracefully move on if the modules failed to load, then I'd get system
hang's on certain systems.   :(

One last thing is that, at least on the more recent Dell's, one needs to
go into the BIOS to modify the default for these chipsets from stealing
1MB of system ram to stealing 8MB of system ram in order to get an X
display that's more than Blue and Red.

In other words, i810 and intelfb are still "high maintenance", but
supportable.

Paul Gray                                         -o)
323 Wright Hall                                   /\\
University of Northern Iowa                      _\_V
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