Re: Linux on Capio II (Geode) ?

From: Lewin A.R.W. Edwards (larwe_at_larwe.com)
Date: 05/26/04 

Date: 25 May 2004 19:13:40 -0700

> > {time period} a nonmaskable SMM interrupt occurs. The Geode hardware
> > doesn't support text modes natively. In text modes, the SMM ISR checks
> > to see if the color or character memory has changed, and if so it
>
> We are using a Geode GX1 based Compaq Internet Appliance 2. We have
> not experienced any of the problem you mentioned. The only strange

Are you using text modes? The discussion we're having here relates to
use of modes which, ordinarily, would be supported by character
generator hardware (which the CS5530/GX1 combo lacks). Font/color
rendering, blink text and cursor are all emulated in unpreemptible
firmware. You'll note that there are many Geode BIOSes out there that
show significant problems with text-mode scrolling in Linux, BTW.

There are other functions in Geode which also go through this baroque
arrangement of HW/SW codependency, but text mode display rendering is
one of the biggies. Geode is not a good choice for realtime
applications unless you can get great vendor support for customized
BIOSes (and not always even then).

> thing is that I can only run at 1024x768 and my friend can only run at
> 800x600. Any other video mode would get the monitor out of sync. I
> am using Xfree 3.3.6 and my friend is using Xfree 4.2. Any idea why?

The changes between these two versions are pretty radical, and in the
case of 3.x servers, there are at /least/ three different forks of the
source tree; two closed-source XF86_SVGA servers (one from NS, one
from a third party I have yet to identify), and one official
open-source version from xfree86.org. I don't know that there is any
good source of documentation on all of this besides the XFree86
source. Unfortunately the "official" NS sources are only available
with an NDA (? I'm not sure how this is reconcilable with GPL).

Anyway, these versions all differ substantially in how they calculate
and validate clock settings. The symptom you describe is, I'd say, par
for the course (it can be instructive to scope the sync lines and see
what's being set up, BTW!). If you are very careful to specify exact
video mode setup in the ModeLine, you can *usually* get a particular
mode working [except scandoubled modes - a patch is required for 4.x -
see my webpage] but really the only way to ensure identicical behavior
between systems is to use the _exact_ same binaries. An alternative
option is to use the fbdev server running over kernel framebuffer
console.

One problem with 4.x servers is that all the "built-in" implicit
modelines need to be overridden. It can be very hard to work out
exactly where the server is picking up its config information
sometimes, and/or hard to work out why it is rejecting user-supplied
modelines.

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