VESA_800x600 (age old question)

[Lewis Thompson]

On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 07:53:59AM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Lewis Thompson
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 2:13 PM
> > To: FreeBSD-questions
> > Subject: Re: VESA_800x600 (age old question)
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 04:59:23PM -0400, Parv wrote:
> > > in message <20040908183714.GA43489 at fajita.org>, wrote Lewis Thompson
> > > thusly...
> > > > vidcontrol: cannot set videomode: Operation not supported by device
> > > >
> > > > Can somebody please tell me what this means?
> > >
> > > All that means is the card does not have proper/complete VESA
> > > implementation.  IOW, get a card w/ proper/complete VESA
> > > implementation?
> >
> > Aha!  So while it does have a VESA BIOS it's just not complete.
> > Presumably the vesa code uses some of the less common features to
> > achieve what it does?  In a word, it's doesn't work and it's not going
> > to without some really radical changes to the vesa code?  Can you
> > confirm/refute this?
> >
> 
> VESA was a standard that was important back in the DOS days.  When it
> first came out the card vendors all came out with TSR's that would
> intercept the VESA calls and either make the equivalent BIOS calls into
> the card BIOS or would setup the registers directly.
> 
> Later on the card vendors all integrated that into their video card
> BIOS roms.
> 
> These days in the age of Windows and protected mode OSs, the video card
> driver generally does not make calls into video BIOS for most things.
> 
> With FreeBSD the VESA stuff is handled by the VESA driver (kldload vesa)
> which talks to vga() which I believe handles the ugliness of the bios
> calls into the actual video card bios.  Only certain cards have been
> tested with this module and this driver.  (you did load the vesa module
> before running vidcontrol and specing VESA modes, did you?)

Yeah, I had it compiled into my kernel ;)

> It's quite possible that your video card does have vesa extensions but
> because of some difference in their implementation, the calls from
> vga() fail, thus the vesa module cannot use it.  Or it's quite possible
> that your manufacturer didn't include VESA support at all.
> 
> There are some DOS utilities floating around which test for VESA
> compatability, you might try booting your laptop into DOS and running
> one of those.  If they say your laptop supports VESA extensions then
> perhaps the vga developer would add support into the driver.

Okay, I'll see if I can give that a go... I'll have to figure out how to
netboot DOS now... :/

  Thanks a lot,

-lewiz.

-- 
I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.  --Bob Dylan, 1964.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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