[haiku-development] Re: Video Problem

Axel Dörfler wrote:
> Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Unfortunately, that's not possible at all, as even VESA standard 
> > > 3.0 does 
> > > not allow to set customized resolutions (which is a pretty stupid 
> > > oversight, if you ask me).
> [...]
> > No I mean that the chip modifies it's own VESA BIOS (like one slot is 
> > reserved for the native EDID resolution of the currently attached 
> > screen). 
> > This is certainly possible, since for a long time, the Linux way to get 
> > a 
> > custom resolution from the Intel driver was to patch it's VESA BIOS. I 
> > am 
> > saying the chip could do it itsself. Would be cool anyways, but who 
> > cares 
> > about some neat VESA features.
> 
> Well, patching a VESA BIOS requires a lot of info to get it right, so 
> that cannot really be a generic solution. Of course, we could 
> specifically try to do this for chipsets we cannot support due to missing 
> specs - but this requires a lot of hacking, and trying, too :-)

You still get me wrong, I meant it would be nice if graphics cards 
implemented this in hardware. I should have put it into <dream></dream>. :-)

We will probably be able to get most of the specs for the contemporary 
chips out there. nVidia may be the last ones where specs are missing, but 
even for them we may find enough information in other FOSS drivers. As I 
said, a preliminary solution may be to write drivers which support mode 
switching only. I don't know enough about writing video drivers, but I 
suspect it's probably a lot easier than writing a driver with support for 
even the limited amount of accelerated functions that the Be API defines. 
And with current day hardware, it seems absolutely reasonable for Haiku. It 
would be like running in VESA mode plus the ability to switch to any screen 
mode.

Obviously investing time and energy into that idea would be much better 
spent than hacking the VESA BIOS of some unsupported cards which may even 
be more work.

Best regards,
-Stephan

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