Hello,

>>> NetBSD-ppc is a constat frustration for me on the video card side. I 
>>> am
>>> running a 2.0 pre version so I have an up-to-date Xfree.
>>>
>>> I never got my ATI mach64 card to work although it should be
>>> supported... and you can select the driver in xf86config
>>
>> i have two mach64 that work fine, a plain one built-in on my
>> starmax 3000, and a ATI XclaimVR PRO
>>
> this is the mach64 that is standard in 9x00 computers. OF supports it
> well.
> The chip itself is suported, I believe Michael is correct in assuming
> there are "pc-ish" assumptions for those cards.
well, on the Voodoo3 XF86 tries to save the cards status by mapping the 
VGA framebuffer ( in x86 speak: a000:0000 ) and storing its content 
somewhere assuming this will store all textmode consoles and all fonts 
you might have loaded. Of course this is completely useless on a 
non-x86 box with a graphical console but it should sort of work none 
the less, the worst part is that some drivers use the vgahw module to 
program video modes through the standard VGA registers which are in IO 
space and hardwired to the 0x3xx range - the PCI specs 'coincidentally' 
allow hardwired IO just there... - again useless on macppc. But the PCI 
specifications demand that everything available as IO must be available 
as MEM too, so all we need to do is to find out where the memory-mapped 
VGA registers are and hack vgahw to use them instead. Last time I 
looked ( a few months ago ) there was some support for memory-mapped IO 
in vgahw but I couldn't figure out how to use it.

have fun
Michael