What is aty128fb?

This is a driver for a graphic framebuffer for ATI Rage128 based deviceson Intel and PPC boxes.

Advantages:

  • It provides a nice large console (128 cols + 48 lines with 1024x768)without using tiny, unreadable fonts.
  • You can run XF68_FBDev on top of /dev/fb0
  • Most important: boot logo :-)

Disadvantages:

  • graphic mode is slower than text mode… but you should not noticeif you use same resolution as you used in textmode.
  • still experimental.

How to use it?

Switching modes is done using the video=aty128fb:<resolution>… modedbboot parameter or usingfbset program.

See Documentation/fb/modedb.rst for more information on modedbresolutions.

You should compile in both vgacon (to boot if you remove your Rage128 frombox) and aty128fb (for graphics mode). You should not compile-in vesafbunless you have primary display on non-Rage128 VBE2.0 device (seeDocumentation/fb/vesafb.rst for details).

X11

XF68_FBDev should generally work fine, but it is non-accelerated. As ofthis document, 8 and 32bpp works fine. There have been palette issueswhen switching from X to console and back to X. You will have to restartX to fix this.

Configuration

You can pass kernel command line options to vesafb withvideo=aty128fb:option1,option2:value2,option3 (multiple options shouldbe separated by comma, values are separated from options by:).Accepted options:

noacceldo not use acceleration engine. It is default.
acceluse acceleration engine. Not finished.
vmode:xchooses PowerMacintosh video mode <x>. Deprecated.
cmode:xchooses PowerMacintosh colour mode <x>. Deprecated.
<XxX@X>selects startup videomode. See modedb.txt for detailedexplanation. Default is 640x480x8bpp.

Limitations

There are known and unknown bugs, features and misfeatures.Currently there are following known bugs:

  • This driver is still experimental and is not finished. Too manybugs/errata to list here.

Brad Douglas <brad@neruo.com>