Re: Xorg startup with serial console

[Connor McLaughlan <cont6pro3%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 7:36 PM Eduardo Horvath <eeh%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 10 Aug 2020, Volker A. Brandt wrote:
>
> > Martin Husemann writes:
> > > I am not sure what OF has to do with any framebuffer or the X server.
> >
> > Nothing really, except that IIUC there will not be a console device in
> > the device tree when there is no keyboard probed by the OBP.  This was
> > Connors original problem.
> >
> > If the OS initializes the frame buffer itself under the path that it is
> > actually present, there shouldn't be any problem.  I guess the real
> > question is how to get NetBSD to initialize the frame buffer this way.
>
> The problem is that the X server driviers are not good enough to fully
> initialize PCI graphics cards and rely on some OBP initialization.  OBP
> only initializes the display device if has been opened.  Now I have
> successfully used SBus graphics cards since they can be fully initialized.
>
> What you can try to do is open the device in the NVRAMRC or have the
> kenrel driver call into OBP and open the device before initializing the
> driver.  Haven't tried this, not sure it will work,
>
> What I do know is that the Solaris drivers used to be able to initialize
> the PCI cards but the NetBSD drivers could not.  I think it may be that
> they require firmware downloads that are only done in the device open
> routine.
>
> Eduardo

At least the Linux people say it is no problem to use a any PCI card
supported by the kernel once it is loaded.
I don't know how different NetBSD is in this regard.

For now i will be getting a Sun PCI graphics card and a Sun USB card
in the hope that those will be acceptable to OBP on a T1000.
Both will be mounted using a PCIe-to-2xPCI splitter.

In any case because NetBSD is not fully working on the T1000 i will be
using OpenBSD first.
If all attempts fail, i will try if Xvfb is an option to get to
something beyond a console only machine.

Regards,
Connor