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Subject: Re: PATCH
From: Pete Popov <ppopov@mvista.com>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
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On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 15:24, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 22:40, Pete Popov wrote:
> > It would be if there was a generic way to go about adding support for
> > graphics cards that require bios support. In this case we were working
> > with the manufacturer and had all the docs, but still couldn't figure
> > out certain pieces needed in initializing the card.  Ultimately the "no
> > bios init" patch you see is a pci bus analyzer capture, filtered through
> > a perl script, dumped into a new file, and integrated as part of the
> > driver.  Even if you could do that with all cards, I'm not sure it's
> > legally allowed. We had the vendor's blessings in this case.
> 
> XFree86 has an emulator library for this.

Thanks; I didn't know that.

One of the problems with these graphics cards is that they are end of
life before you finish writing the driver. I still have a few RageXL
cards in the office, but you can't even buy them in the store anymore.

Pete