[9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[Lyndon Nerenberg - VE6BBM/VE7TFX]

Is anyone working on Unichrome vga support?

Re: [9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[W B Hacker]

Lyndon Nerenberg - VE6BBM/VE7TFX wrote:
> Is anyone working on Unichrome vga support?
>
>

Besides Unichrome, which CPU, RAM, MB & ~bridge chips are you trying to use it with?

ISTR having it up on a VIA C3 ~ 700 MHz, 1 GB SDRAM with embedded Unichrome
onboard about 2+ years ago..

And the CD still here boots fine on a Pentium-M Lenovo laptop.

However - it will not boot on a newer VIA C6 1.5 GHz 2 GB DDR2 RAM, also with
(newer) embedded unichrome on-board.

I suspect the VIA ~bridge chipset is not au fait with getting Plan9 to the CDR.

NB: XCPU live CD is happy  - but that isn't booting a Plan9 - just hosting it on
Fedora.

Bill Hacker

Re: [9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> Besides Unichrome, which CPU, RAM, MB & ~bridge chips are you trying to use it with?
>
> ISTR having it up on a VIA C3 ~ 700 MHz, 1 GB SDRAM with embedded Unichrome
> onboard about 2+ years ago..

It's a 1GHz C7 EPIA mini-ITX board, CN400 chipset (I *think* -- I
can't get at it right this second to spot the model number).  But I'm
interested in Unichrome generically.  VESA works fine, but I only want
enough native support to make the vncv mouse turds go away.  I'm just
curious to know if anyone else is working on this and wants to share
code/doc/whatever.  I'm a couple of weeks away from starting (the
hardware is currently occupied doing other things).

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[W B Hacker]

Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX) wrote:
>> Besides Unichrome, which CPU, RAM, MB & ~bridge chips are you trying to use it with?
>>
>> ISTR having it up on a VIA C3 ~ 700 MHz, 1 GB SDRAM with embedded Unichrome
>> onboard about 2+ years ago..
>
> It's a 1GHz C7 EPIA mini-ITX board, CN400 chipset (I *think* -- I
> can't get at it right this second to spot the model number).  But I'm
> interested in Unichrome generically.  VESA works fine, but I only want
> enough native support to make the vncv mouse turds go away.  I'm just
> curious to know if anyone else is working on this and wants to share
> code/doc/whatever.  I'm a couple of weeks away from starting (the
> hardware is currently occupied doing other things).
>
> --lyndon
>
>

ACK - mine are the mini-ATX (PC-2500?).

VESA is probably all you will get - but I've not had problems with VNC artifacts
with that (when I still used it...).


Bill

Re: [9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[W B Hacker]

W B Hacker wrote:
> Lyndon Nerenberg - VE6BBM/VE7TFX wrote:
>> Is anyone working on Unichrome vga support?
>>
>
> Besides Unichrome, which CPU, RAM, MB & ~bridge chips are you trying to
> use it with?
>
> ISTR having it up on a VIA C3 ~ 700 MHz, 1 GB SDRAM with embedded
> Unichrome onboard about 2+ years ago..
>
> And the CD still here boots fine on a Pentium-M Lenovo laptop.
>
> However - it will not boot on a newer VIA C6 1.5 GHz 2 GB DDR2 RAM, also
> with (newer) embedded unichrome on-board.
>
> I suspect the VIA ~bridge chipset is not au fait with getting Plan9 to
> the CDR.
>
> NB: XCPU live CD is happy  - but that isn't booting a Plan9 - just
> hosting it on Fedora.
>
> Bill Hacker
>

Scratch that - it should boot IF the CDR is the 'zeroth' device.

Mine is not, and I am too tired to open the case and mess with it.

BTW - 9 renders very cleanly on the Lenovo at a manually-entered 1280x800x16
using the onboard Wintel 945GM/GMS/GME graphics controller, ergo I presume  9 is
in VESA mode.

The Unichrome has always been comfortable with VESA under other OS'en that don't
have a bespoke S3 driver handy, so unless you are looking for a bespoke,
accelerated driver....


Bill

Re: [9fans] vga support for Via Unichrome

[Richard Miller]

> Is anyone working on Unichrome vga support?

I made a start a few years ago, attempting to extract the register
initialisation code from via's published framebuffer driver, but
eventually I lost the will to live -- too many chipset variants,
different interfaces for lcd vs crt vs dvi vs tv, etc etc.  If
there's proper documentation available I'd recommend trying that
instead.