Subject: Re: New snapshot of ATI Mach64 framebuffer driver
To: Frank van der Linden <fvdl@wasabisystems.com>
From: Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/13/2002 22:51:36
I think there is some miscomunication happening.

Bang is probably not aware of the historic /dev/fb vs. current wscons
difference, and when he sys MI /dev/fb we should read wscons.

There are lots of details, and IMHO an X server that opens /dev/vga and gets
basically the same ioctls as the alpha (and macppc with Charles patches) does
now with /dev/pci is a good thing. This is very likely the direction the X
support for sparc{64} is going. I've been told it's only one initialization
function in the X server that needs to be changed.

If the i386 port will follow this step is another question, but it does not
need to do lots of code duplication. On i386 the current vga driver can
be used. The step to skip in the X driver is only the PCI bus scanning.
After that, the usual X driver model kicks in.


Martin