Brian A. Seklecki wrote:

> ...obviously this is quite a-ways down the road for port-700 series
> development, but I was curious -- what are the chances of working torwards
> XFree86 support for this series onboard FB?  From my DMESG:
> 
> "GIO Graphics" at mainbus0 (type a, sv 85) hpa f8000000 not configured
> 
> The user's manual is available at:
> 
> http://www.hp.com/workstations/support/archive/manuals/A2615-90602.pdf
> 
> But it's very superficial.  I'm having trouble finding info about this IC in
> google.  I'll try to get a serial number of the mainboard.  Apparently the
> HP-UX X server is based off of X11R5, so support has exists at one point or
> another.  X11R6 seems to have support in: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/hp/
> 
> Ideas?

Brian,

The HP 712 Workstation is over 10 years old.  So realize that platform 
is similar in performance to a P5-150 with a Matrox Millenium graphics 
chip.  I've got one here in my office if anyone wants to pay for shipping.

I don't believe HP has released any specifications, but the Puffin Group 
was sponsered by HP to port Linux to HP-PA processors and may have 
gotten the graphics chip specs.  The name of the graphics chip is "Artist".

You can look at the sources in the xc/programs/Xserver/hw/hp tree.  The 
ngle subdirectory has support for Artist under HP-UX 9.x, but it's 
purely unaccellerated.  I'm not certain of the status for HP-UX 10.x or 
11.x, but if you can get 9.x you can build Xhp in source form and see it 
work.

There is a binary only module that comes in the NGLE directory.  That 
provides hardware accelleration for screen clear and screen to screen 
copies.

One of the biggest challenges you'll face trying to get this generation 
of HP graphics working on non-HPUX platforms is getting specs and 
interfacing with the graphics ROM interface.  The interface is called 
STI for Standard Text Interface and reside below the normal system IODC 
ROM interface.  The NGLE driver makes kernel calls ioctl(GC*...) to an
HP-UX kernel driver that call the STI ROM directly.

In summary, this would be a large mountain to climp (access to specs and 
reworking HP's architecture to work with XFree86).  With HP's blessing 
and a lot of work, it's possible.  However, it's only reward may be the 
journey itself.

Regards,
Jens

-- 
                                /\
          Jens Owen            /  \/\ _
   jens@tungstengraphics.com  /    \ \ \   Steamboat Springs, Colorado