DRI shouldn't be specific to AGP.  I believe a number of the newer cards
that have DRI drivers are AGP only, but I haven't looked at 4.0.2.

Currently under NetBSD an AGP card looks like any other PCI card, so
it will work fine.  The issue is that DRI needs low-level access to
the card to support DMA, which means a kernel (and perhaps AGP) driver
to support it.

There was a thread (mid last year?) about i810 chipset support with
the aperture driver, but I think the end result was that it didn't
work yet.  My guess is that it could be done via the aperture driver,
but I am not much of a programmer, so.. :)

-Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Rauch" <rauch@eecs.ukans.edu>
To: "Andrew Gillham" <gillham@vaultron.com>
Cc: "Frederick Bruckman" <fb@enteract.com>; "Jared D. McNeill"
<jmcneill@invisible.yi.org>; <port-i386@netbsd.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: XFree86 4.0.2 snapshot available (was Re: Successful
NetBSD)


> > AFAIK kernel support is required for DRI.  NetBSD doesn't currently
> > have any AGP specific support.
>
> I wasn't aware that it was specific to AGP.  I assumed that it would
> provide accelerated support on PCI cards, too.  Up to now, I thought
that
> AGP's primary point was to provide more bandwidth (as compared with
PCI),
> mostly for getting textures loaded into the 3D engines on the graphics
> cards.  (Does your statement also mean that if I put an AGP card into
my
> machine, I couldn't use it at all with NetBSD?  Or could I still use
it
> more or less as a PCI video card?)
>
> However, that kernel support is required is my vague understanding as
> well.  Is there some fundamental reason that DRI support couldn't be
done
> in something analogus to the apeture driver?  (At this point, my
limited
> grasp of DRI is only at the highest level, as you can probably tell.
(^&)
>
>
> DRI is something that I want to look into in the next several months,
if
> and as time permits.  At least to the point of understanding what's
> required, and perhaps to the point of making some concrete
contribution to
> getting it up on NetBSD.  Right now, I'd say that it's looking
favorable
> that I'll find that time, though I may find myself out of my depth a
few
> times along the way.
>
>
> > -Andrew
> >
> > From: "Richard Rauch" <rauch@eecs.ukans.edu>
> >
> > > My understanding is that DRI stands for ``Direct Rendering
Interface''
> > (or
> > > Infrastructure?).  It is an enhancement for Mesa support to
directly
> > > access the hardware to accelerate the OpenGL implementation.  It
is
> > not
> > > ``-current for XFree86''; it is a specific feature that was
present in
> > 4.0
> > > (for GNU/LINUX), and is apparently now supported on FreeBSD.
> > >
> > > Is my understanding on this point wrong?  Or are you saying that
DRI
> > works
> > > on NetBSD, now?  My understanding is that it does not.  But we can
> > > certainly use XFree86 4.x with NetBSD, without this one feature.
> > >
> > > I'd love to hear that 4.0.2 with NetBSD 1.5 (even if
only -current) is
> > a
> > > different story, w.r.t. DRI, than 4.0 was for NetBSD.
> > >
> > >
> > >   "I probably don't know what I'm talking
> > about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>   "I probably don't know what I'm talking
about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu
>