[PATCH 0/4] fbdev: uvesafb

uvesafb is a generic driver for VBE2+ compliant video cards; an enhanced
version of vesafb and a direct successor of vesafb-tng [1].

uvesafb uses a userspace helper application (v86d, [2]) to run the x86
Video BIOS code.  This makes it possible to include in uvesafb all the
standard features (refresh rate control, video mode changes etc) that
are missing from vesafb without resorting to ugly hacks such as the ones
used in [1].  The current implementation of v86d can use either LRMI or
x86emu to run the BIOS code and supports both x86 and x86_64.

[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/vesafb-tng/
[2] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/

Best regards.
-- 
Michal Januszewski                              JID: spock@im.gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux Developer                    http://people.gentoo.org/spock


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On Saturday 23 June 2007, Michal Januszewski wrote:

 The current implementation of v86d can use either LRMI or
x86emu to run the BIOS code and supports both x86 and x86_64.

Is there a fundamental reason why you can't also run it on
non-x86 machines, or has this simply not been tested so far?

	Arnd <><

On Sat, Jun 23, 2007 at 02:04:09PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

On Saturday 23 June 2007, Michal Januszewski wrote:

quoted

 The current implementation of v86d can use either LRMI or
x86emu to run the BIOS code and supports both x86 and x86_64.

Is there a fundamental reason why you can't also run it on
non-x86 machines, or has this simply not been tested so far?

AFAIK it should be possible to get it to work on non-x86.  One would
have to implement the IO functions for x86emu and mmap the Video BIOS,
both of which should be relatively easy tasks.  I don't however have 
direct access to hardware other than x86(_64) and thus haven't had a
chance to write such code and test it.

Best regards,
Michal


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On Sat, Jun 23, 2007 at 12:49:20PM +0200, Michal Januszewski wrote:

uvesafb is a generic driver for VBE2+ compliant video cards; an enhanced
version of vesafb and a direct successor of vesafb-tng [1].

uvesafb uses a userspace helper application (v86d, [2]) to run the x86
Video BIOS code.  This makes it possible to include in uvesafb all the
standard features (refresh rate control, video mode changes etc) that
are missing from vesafb without resorting to ugly hacks such as the ones
used in [1].  The current implementation of v86d can use either LRMI or
x86emu to run the BIOS code and supports both x86 and x86_64.

Have you considered using libx86[1] in v86d? It looks very similar to
what you have at present and there are plans to extend it to non
x86(_64) archs.

J.

[1] http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/libx86/

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On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:42:41AM +0100, Jonathan McDowell wrote:

Have you considered using libx86[1] in v86d? It looks very similar to
what you have at present and there are plans to extend it to non
x86(_64) archs.

It looks like an interesting solution and it is indeed similar to what
I'm currently using.  I'll consider switching to it in the next version
of v86d.

Thanks,
Michal


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On Sat, 2007-06-23 at 12:49 +0200, Michal Januszewski wrote:

My apologies for the delayed response. I had problems with my ISP.
 

uvesafb is a generic driver for VBE2+ compliant video cards; an enhanced
version of vesafb and a direct successor of vesafb-tng [1].

uvesafb uses a userspace helper application (v86d, [2]) to run the x86
Video BIOS code.  This makes it possible to include in uvesafb all the
standard features (refresh rate control, video mode changes etc) that
are missing from vesafb without resorting to ugly hacks such as the ones
used in [1].  The current implementation of v86d can use either LRMI or
x86emu to run the BIOS code and supports both x86 and x86_64.

[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/vesafb-tng/
[2] http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/

This is cool, I had a similar project before (which did work) but
abandoned it. In fact, it need not be restricted to vbe, as long as the
userspace daemon can interpret VESA.

Tony



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