Linux Framebuffer Driver for the 3DLabs Permedia3 chipset.

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Author

Romain Dolbeau

Status

This driver is still very experimental :

I'm looking for success/failure reports & beta-testers, please contact me if you have a permedia3 board (and linux of course)

it's known to work on the Formac ProFormance 3 board (on an Apple PowerMacintosh)
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').
now works with XFree86 'fbdev' driver.
might have support for multiple boards.
might have support for multiple chips per board (like Appian boards, the J2000 sort of works now)
partially accelerated.
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 (as implemented in linux & macintoshes).
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 1:2:3 with mode 640x480 @ 60 Hz as board #0

mode:[Y:]XXXXX where XXXXX is one of the valid mode described in pm3fb.c (modebase) and Y an (optional) board number. 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:[Y:] or disable:[Y:] (no parameter beyond optional board number Y) 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:
off (all by itself) : disable all boards. Effectively pm3fb will only go trough all PCI devices and do nothing.
noaccel:[Y:] (no parameter beyond optional board number Y) disable acceleration for board Y. As with off:, it's safer to explicitely give a board number.
font:[Y:]FONTNAME Board Y will default to font of name FONTNAME. example: video=pm3fb,font:VGA8x8

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

more acceleration
more bugs fix

Changelog

Thu Mar 8 10:20:16 MET 2001, v 1.2.2: Better J2000 support, "font:" option.

Tue Mar 6 21:25:04 CET 2001, v 1.2.1: Better acceleration support.

Mon Mar 5 21:54:17 CET 2001, v 1.2.0: Partial acceleration support (clear & bmove)

Mon Mar 5 12:52:15 CET 2001, v 1.1.3: Big pan_display fix.

Sun Mar 4 22:21:50 CET 2001, v 1.1.2: (numerous) bug fixes.

Fri Mar 2 15:54:07 CET 2001, v 1.1.1: Might have Appian J2000 support, resource mangement in 2.4

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