Graphics hardware support on sparc64

[Michael Lorenz <macallan%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On Nov 22, 2007, at 15:30, Volker A. Brandt wrote:

> It would be good if you could (maybe periodically) a small
> table of existing cards and their support status.  I might have
> some time for testing over Christmas, and I have a pile of cards.
> Most of them are SBus and horizontal and vertical UPA but some PCI.

Since I just ran into this and have a few minutes to spare here we go:

1. UPA cards
All UPA cards should work as console ( with the ffb driver ) and in X  
( with the sunffb driver ). Elite3D cards need an extra step - you  
need to upload a firmware image into the card using the afbinit  
utility from pkgsrc and a firmware file from Solaris ( we're not  
allowed to ship it, mails to Sun asking about it haven't been  
answered for years )
The two most annoying, long-standing bugs have been fixed, namely  
VRAM corruption after blanking on ffb1 boards and occasional greenish- 
bluish artifacts during alpha-blending operations on ffb2 or newer.

2. SBus cards
All cg6 variants should Just Work(tm), both as console ( cgsix at  
sbus ) and in X ( using the suncg6 driver ).
The Fujitsu AG-10e should work but is untested since I don't have a  
64bit SBus machine with two SBus slots close enough together for this  
card to fit. The kernel driver was compile-tested only, same about  
the X driver. Since the X driver conflicts with the glint driver it's  
not built by default, I need to resolve this at some point by  
renaming a bunch of functions or making them static. Chances are it  
would just work.
Other SBus cards are untested at best and not very common in sparc64  
hardware anyway, except maybe the ZX. We have a kernel driver for it  
but it doesn't support wscons and X probably won't work at all. Genfb  
at sbus might work but there are numerous problems, for instance  
programming palette registers works only on a handful cards if at  
all, many SBus cards use non-standard firmware properties ( like the  
AG-10e ) and we have native drivers for the SBus graphics chips I  
could test with genfb anyway.
If you have an unsupported SBus graphics card in a sparc64 box please  
try it with genfb but don't hold your breath. Colours will likely be  
off but otherwise it should work if the firmware isn't too quirky.

3. PCI cards
The PGX and PGX24 ( using Rage II and Pro chips ) work as console  
( mach64 at pci ) and in X ( atimisc driver ). The PGX64 uses the  
Rage XL and should work but there have been problem reports which I  
can't do anything about for lack of hardware.
The PGX32, basically a rebadged TechSource Raptor GFX 8P, which in  
tun is basically a Permedia2 with sun-firmware and a bunch of  
jumpers, works both as console ( genfb at pci, unaccelerated but  
works ) and in X ( accelerated, using the glint driver ). These cards  
have varying degrees of firmware screwiness which can be worked  
around though:
- - the OF calls for changing palette registers don't work so either  
run the card in 32bit or live with screwed up colours in the console.  
This doesn't affect X at all
- - we found two different bugs regarding OpenFirmware properties which  
we currently have workarounds for. If you have a PGX32 or Raptor 8P  
and genfb's output looks messed up you likely have yet another  
firmware bug. In this case please mail me the ofctl -p output and  
I'll implement yet another workaround.
Radeon-based cards like the XVR-100 should work with radeonfb or  
genfb but they're untested for lack of hardware. X should support  
them with the radeon driver.
Higher end Sun graphics boards like the XVR-500 use variants of the  
3Dlab Wildcat chipset. They should work as console with the genfb  
driver but X likely doesn't support them. Your best bet is to play  
with the glint driver, these chips might be similar enough to get  
something to work. Otherwise try the wsfb driver, it should work but  
is unaccelerated.
Some Tadpole laptops use an ATI Rage 128 graphics controller. We have  
an accelerated driver for it ( r128fb at pci ) but it's been tested  
on macppc only and will need some trivial hacking to attach ( there  
are dozens of Rage 128 variants and so far it attaches only to the  
one I have here because I have no idea what exactly the differences  
between those models are and how to deal with them. I wish ATI/AMD  
would release docs for older chips as well. ). Genfb should work and  
so should X with the r128 driver.

That's it for now, we should have the most common cards supported.  
All console and X drivers except genfb and wsfb use hardware  
acceleration. We don't support any kind of 3D acceleration yet.

Also, all X drivers except wsfb will configure automatically with X - 
configure.

Graphics cards without Sun firmware will NOT work. We need the  
firmware to set them up as console and currently X doesn't support  
PCI devices as secondary heads. It does support SBus and UPA cards as  
secondary heads though, so if you want to use both the onboard Rage  
II/Pro and a Creator 3D in - say - an U10 you need to set the console  
to the Rage and X should see both graphics chips.

As always, if you think I forgot something please tell me.

If you have hardware you want supported send me a card and I'll see  
what I can do - so far I managed to get every single graphics device  
I got my hands on to work. I still need to write a console driver for  
the PGX32 but X works with acceleration which is probably what counts  
to most people ;)
Other TechSource cards might be easiest to support since they tend to  
use off-the-shelf graphics chips with their own Sun-compatible firmware.

Also, I don't know which 64bit Sun machines would have two SBus slots  
right next to each other ( like the SS20 does ) - on the U1 they're  
too far apart so the AG-10e doesn't fit. I suspect it might fit in  
the U2. So, if anyone wants this to work I need an U2 :)

have fun
Michael

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