Question on video cards.

Hello all,

I know this topic has been done to death. And I have read quite a lot in the mailing list archives.
If I've missed something please feal free to point me in the right direction.

I've got a Fx10 (grumbles)
I don't want to go back to a Vis-EG 8bit colour no thanks I use the Fx10 in Hp-UX

I have read that the voodoo 2 card "should" work?

via a small vga cable. is this the card everyone is talking about? If so can I piggy back it off my FX10? Or do I need to use it by it self?

Can anyone confirm that this works?

Also has any one tested this? 8MB 3dfx Voodoo Banshee PCI?

Thanks
Brendan

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Yes. It was basically sold as a 3D add-on card, and when using a 3D game, your main graphics card would switch
off and the Voodoo2 would display the 3D picture.
However the Voodoo2 can actually be used as a 'normal' graphics card (incl. accelerated 2D), but AFAIK it was
not identified as a graphics card to the x86-BIOS and therefore not initialized as such and also the Windows drivers didn't support 2D with the Voodoo2.
IIRC the Voodoo Banshee was basically somewhat 'upgraded' Voodoo2 with working 2D support and sold as a 'real' graphics card.

But when running Linux you can use the Voodoo2 just like any normal graphics card.

If so can I piggy back it off my FX10? Or do I need to use it by it self?

You should be able to do both. Use sticon/stifb/X11 (fbdev) with the FX10 and the voodoo fb driver X11 (fbdev) for the Voodoo2.
If you want to use the Voodoo2 alone, you might want
to include the fbcon driver as well, but you'll always need to use the serial console if you want to get into the PDC
if you don't use the FX10.

----

I have a Voodoo2 and a Matrox Millenium I
(4MB + 4MB add on). Both used to work fine with 32bit kernels on a C240, C3000 and C3700,
the Voodoo2 at 1024x768x24bit, and the Matrox with 1280x1024x24bit (my monitor doesn't support more). My Voodoo2 however as a terrible signal quality!
I also had several success reports from people using a Matrox Millenium II (AFAIK very similar to v1 anyway) ...

... HOWEVER I haven't tested whether all the cards works with recent kernels, last time I used that machine as a desktop was half a year back with a 2.6.9 kernel or something. IIRC also 64bit fbcon worked back then, but the machine would HPMC when it tried to start XFree86.

IIRC the first person who succeeded in having a 24bit desktop with a non-HP gfx card did it with a ATI Rage XL.
I also have the same card, but I never managed to get
it working.

Note though you will get a 24bit desktop with these gfx cards you will have no 2D acceleration, as they are just work with X11/fbdev. Once we get the native Xorg working on parisc they should be fast enough for video playback I guess, but right now it is a quite sluggish desktop experience ...

-----

BTW, I've read some paper that described the effort required to get ATI and NVidia cards to initialize on
non-Intel systems by the means of a software x86-Emulator (like the one that is in XFree86/Xorg).
IIRC the nvidia cards where the least troublesome, but
the init sequence needed for ATI cards are also well
understood.

----

I don't know what parts need to be done to get the x86-BIOS emu or XFree86/Xorg working on parisc, but once fixed you should be able to get accelerated 2D with readily available gfx cards such as newer cards from ATI/NVidia.

I don't think it would be that easy to get accelerated 3D working though, since someone would also have to port DRI etc...

Greetings,
Max

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Err... No.

Only sticon works on FX cards. That's the whole point, you cannot do graphics *at all* with them. Only text.

HTH

Thibaut VARENE
http://www.parisc-linux.org/~varenet/
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