[9fans] Matrox cards - state of the nation

[9fans] Matrox cards - state of the nation

[nigel]

Following the sudden resumption of mail to news service,
several emails have appeared about Matrox Millenium and
G series cards. Rather than reply individually, I'll summarise.

The status of the release code is as follows:

1. I have a Millenium and a Millenium II (both PCI). These both
   work. There is a possibility that the NOBIOS option in pc/pci.c
   might be needed on certain machines, which hints at a small
   initialisation problem, but otherwise fine.

2. Only 8 bits per pixel works.

3. Cards with daughterboard memory upgrades are unproven.
   They may well work, but I have no means to test.

4. You CANNOT persuade a G series card to work by just
   playing with /lib/vgadb. The RAMDACs are different.

I have some improved code with

1. G series support. It work on a G400 MAX 32mb. Can't
   promise the others. There are changes to aux/vga,
   lib/vgadb, and 9/pc

2. Hardware acceleration. This works like a dream for the
   Millenium and Millenium II, but severely slows down (!)
   the G400, and corrupts the screen. More work required
   here clearly. However, the acceleration is all that the
   reputation of Matrox says.

If anyone with the ability to recompile the kernel wants
to do some testing, let me know.