nouveau i386 AGP invisible text?

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

I had opportunity to go through my stash of AGP NVidia graphics cards.

The only one with DVI output was apparently toast and the machine wouldn't
complete POST.

Two others had voltage-specific slot keying and wouldn't fit the AGP slot
on the Intel D845EGB2 board I was using.

The remaining cards all worked, up to a point.  As soon as the nouveau
driver attached and the display switched to the framebuffer console, the
only visible element was a bright block cursor.  As it's position changed,
it was clear text was being displayed but it was invisible (black-on-black).

Relevant snippets of "dmesg.boot":

NetBSD 8.99.1 (GENERIC) #97: Thu Jul 27 14:33:25 CDT 2017
        sysop%x3650.technoskunk.fur@localhost:/r1/build/current/obj/i386/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
[...]
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1
pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, rd/mult, wr/inv ok
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0: Intel 82845 Host (rev. 0x11)
agp0 at pchb0: aperture at 0xfc400000, size 0x400000
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: Intel 82845 AGP (rev. 0x11)
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
pci1: i/o space, memory space enabled
nouveau0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0: NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 (rev. 0x15)
drm kern info: nouveau  [  DEVICE][nouveau0] BOOT0  : 0x20154000
drm kern info: nouveau  [  DEVICE][nouveau0] Chipset: NV05 (NV05)
drm kern info: nouveau  [  DEVICE][nouveau0] Family : NV04
drm kern info: nouveau  [   VBIOS][nouveau0] checking PRAMIN for image...
drm kern info: nouveau  [   VBIOS][nouveau0] ... appears to be valid
drm kern info: nouveau  [   VBIOS][nouveau0] using image from PRAMIN
drm kern info: nouveau  [   VBIOS][nouveau0] BMP version 5.1
drm kern info: nouveau  [   VBIOS][nouveau0] version 02.05.17.06.00
drm kern warning: nouveau W[   VBIOS][nouveau0] DCB table not found
drm kern warning: nouveau W[   VBIOS][nouveau0] DCB table not found
drm kern warning: nouveau W[   VBIOS][nouveau0] DCB table not found
drm kern warning: nouveau W[   VBIOS][nouveau0] DCB table not found
nouveau0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 16 (nouveau)
drm kern warning: nouveau W[  PTIMER][nouveau0] unknown input clock freq
drm kern info: nouveau  [     PFB][nouveau0] RAM type: SDRAM
drm kern info: nouveau  [     PFB][nouveau0] RAM size: 16 MiB
drm kern info: nouveau  [     PFB][nouveau0]    ZCOMP: 0 tags
drm kern info: nouveau  [     CLK][nouveau0] --:   
Zone  kernel: Available graphics memory: 789808 kiB
drm kern info: nouveau  [     DRM] VRAM: 15 MiB
drm kern info: nouveau  [     DRM] GART: 4 MiB
drm kern info: nouveau  [     DRM] BMP version 5.1
drm kern warning: nouveau W[     DRM] No DCB data found in VBIOS
drm kern info: nouveau  [     DRM] Saving VGA fonts
drm kern warning: nouveau W[     DRM] No DCB data found in VBIOS
drm: Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 2 (21.10.2013).
drm: Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
drm kern info: nouveau  [     DRM] MM: using M2MF for buffer copies
nouveaufb0 at nouveau0
nouveau0: info: registered panic notifier
nouveaufb0: framebuffer at 0xdc2a0000, size 1440x900, depth 8, stride 1536
wsdisplay0 at nouveaufb0 kbdmux 1: console (default, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0
wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0
[...]


Anyone else playing with nouveau on i386 w/AGP?  I have a pile of these
cards, so if someone with sufficient nouveau clue cares to bang on them,
I can supply a couple or three.


The only other AGP NVidia card I've had a chance to try was a Quadro 780
in an IBM IntelliStation ZPro and it worked OK for the framebuffer console,
but had problems with X.

I also checked out a PCI GeForce FX5200 and nouveau liked it just fine.
X worked but was decidedly sluggish--you could watch the FVWM root menu
being drawn.

There are a couple of other AGP NVidia cards hiding in some other machines
around here, but I haven't had a chance to poke at them yet.

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