Linux Framebuffer Driver for the 3DLabs Permedia3 chipset.

Author

Romain Dolbeau

Status

This driver is still very experimental :

it's known to work on the Formac ProFormance 3 board
it has *not* been thoroughly tested on this board
it has *not* been tested *at all* on *any* other board ; you've been warned !
it seems to work fine with the latest (4.0.99.1) CVS Xfree86 driver ('glint')
the kernel goes down in flames when trying to use XFree86 'fbdev' driver. OOOOOps.
might have support for multiple boards
might have support for multiple chips per board (like Appian boards), but I think there's not enough initialization.
*no* acceleration at all
it has only been tested with linux-2.2.18, and a little with a ppc-patched linux-2.4.2-pre4
it works OK with OpenFirmware
resolution switching (via fbset) seems to work

How to use

Assuming LINUXSRC is the path to the top of your linux kernel source tree:

put the files pm3fb.h and pm3fb.c in $LINUXSRC/driver/video
patch linux-2.2.18 (or 2.4.x) with the included patch : cd $LINUXSRC ; patch -p1 < linux-2.2.18-pm3.patch or cd $LINUXSRC ; patch -p1 < linux-2.4.x-pm3.patch
add the driver to your kernel (you'll need CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL and CONFIG_PCI)
compile, install, reboot - and enjoy if hell doesn't break loose.

Options

All options are of the form <option_name>:[<board_number>:]<options_parameters> Brackets mean the board number (internally used to represent each board, from 0 on) is "optional" Note that for PCIID the board number is mandatory (it defaults to 0 for all other options). Options are separated by a comma ","

exemple: video=pm3fb,mode:640x480-60,pciid:0:1:2:3 will use board at PCIID 0:1:3 with mode 640x480 @ 60 Hz as board #0

mode:[board_number:]XXXXX where XXXXX is one of the valid mode described in pm3fb.c (modebase). Default is 800x600-75 w/o OpenFirmware, whatever was available upon boot with OF. example : video=pm3fb,mode:800x600-75 or video=pm3fb,mode:0:800x600-75
pciid:X:B:S:F with X the board number (in the driver), B the Pci Bus number, S the Pci Slot number, and F the Pci Function number. example : video=pm3fb,pciid:0:0:14:0
off: or disable: (no parameter) disable the board. The board will be allowed internally, but will not be either initialized or used. It's useful if you want to use another driver (offb, vesafb) or skip one board. warning : you should always use pciid and give explicit board number with this option, to make sure the right one is disabled. example: video=pm3fb,pciid:0:0:14:0,off:0:

note : internal board number must be allocated in order, without hole ; card number #2 will be used only if card #0 and card #1 are.

Todo

acceleration
more bugs fix

Changelog

Wed Feb 28 18:21:35 CET 2001, v 1.1.0: Might have multiple boards support (added, but not yest tested)

Tue Feb 27 17:31:12 CET 2001, v 1.0.6: fixes boot-time mode select, add more default mode

Tue Feb 27 14:01:36 CET 2001, v 1.0.5: fixes (1.0.4 was broken for 2.2), cleaning up

Mon Feb 26 23:17:36 CET 2001, v 1.0.4: preliminary 2.4.x support, dropped (useless on pm3) partial product, more OF fix

Mon Feb 26 20:59:05 CET 2001, v 1.0.3: No more shadow register (and wasted memory), endianess fix, use OF-preset resolution by default

Wed Feb 21 22:09:30 CET 2001, v 1.0.2: Code cleaning for future multiboard support, better OF support, bugs fix

Wed Feb 21 19:58:56 CET 2001, v 1.0.1: OpenFirmware support, fixed memory detection, better debug support, code cleaning

Wed Feb 21 14:47:06 CET 2001, v 1.0.0: First working version