Subject: Re: Any value in PowerVR source release?
To: Jack Twilley <jmt@twilley.org>
From: M. R. Brown <mrbrown@0xd6.org>
List: port-dreamcast
Date: 04/28/2002 07:13:42
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* Jack Twilley <jmt@twilley.org> on Sun, Apr 28, 2002:

> Slashdot had an article about a Linux user who connected an IDE hard
> drive to his Dreamcast.  One of the comments for the article commented
> that the Dreamcast video subsystem was created by PowerVR who open
> sourced the video drivers for Linux.  The URL is
> http://www.powervr.com/downloads.asp and they have the source
> available in tar format.  I do not see any links on that page to
> specific licensing, but I could be missing something.
>=20

Two things:

1) This is an NVIDIA-style driver release.  You will only find wrappers
around binary-only proprietary drivers, and no actual source code for the
2D/3D components of the Kyro/KyroII.  They only "open sourced" their kernel
compatibility layer.

2) Kyro/KyroII - this is _not_ the chip used in the Dreamcast, you may be
able to consider it a "superset", but any source for the Kyro series
(PowerVR3 and beyond) won't do any good for the Dreamcast.

Your best bet for low-level specs on the PowerVR2 found in the Dreamcast is
to reference the documents written by other homebrew DC developers.

M. R.

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