Re: FrameBuffers

[Jay Estabrook <Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com>]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 11:07:02AM -0400, Christopher C. Chimelis wrote:
> 
> All joking aside, there are only a few "framebuffer" drivers that work on
> Alpha (that is, using the framebuffer device driver).  I just quickly
> looked in the kernel docs and the only ones that I could find listed are
> the Matrox and TGA framebuffer drivers (the docs may be outdated, though).

It should be better than that; I went through 2.2.17-pre and
2.4.0-test6-pre and fixed a few small problems that made some of the
others work as well; Rage128 was one that I fixed, along with
Permedia2. More are available under 2.4.x, including nVidia and 3Dfx
which worked OOTB on Alpha, but a number were not checked or didn't
work - Cirrus, SiS, Mach64.

> HOWEVER, this does NOT preclude you from using that card in an Alpha.  In
> fact, most Voodoo3 cards are known to work in Alphas (I haven't heard of
> one that doesn't yet), although we don't have an X server for them
> yet in the stable tree of Debian.  You could compile one, however, if
> you're so inclined to install XFree86 4.0.x.

I believe there was working support for 3Dfx in 3.3.6, though it
wasn't built by default on Alpha even though it did work.

But, it sounded as if the 1000A SRM console did work OK with the
Voodoo3, which is the first hurdle that must be cleared. Whether
it would work with others, such as nVidia or the like, is unclear;
it must be tried to find out. Using the latest SRM console available
for the 1000A is the best bet, but I'm almost certain (at least) the
later nVidia cards would not work, as the BIOS emulator only recently
(on the EV6 platforms at least) became able to run their code... :-\

--Jay++

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Jay A Estabrook                            Alpha Engineering - LINUX Project
Compaq Computer Corp. - MRO1-2/K20         (508) 467-2080
200 Forest Street, Marlboro MA 01752       Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com
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