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VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 3:49 am
by giszo
Hi!

Are there anyone who have ever tried to write a video driver for the VMware "hardware" ? I'd like to ask some question about that... I'm using VMware 5.0 ( video chip has 0x0405 device ID ) and i've problems with the framebuffer. The card tells me where the framebuffer is ( actually 0xF0000000 ) and how long it is. I'm doing the following: alloc as much real memory as the card tells and remap the 0xF0000000 area to the real memory space. I think it's good, but in real life it isn't working. I can do everything, but the screen doesn't change. Pls help if you can! ;)

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:16 am
by fraserjgordon
Just a thought - have you tried writing without allocating memory or remapping the framebuffer? Writing to the fb memory area should directly access the card RAM instead of the system RAM.

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:25 am
by giszo
I've tried to write directly to the framebuffer, but then i got a page fault :(

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 10:12 am
by durand
I'm doing the following: alloc as much real memory as the card tells and remap the 0xF0000000 area to the real memory space.
I think you're doing it the wrong way around. The video device will use real memory addresses and not virtual.

So you really shouldn't be allocating any memory. You should just be remapping *somewhere* to point to the real address of 0xF0000000.

:)

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 10:28 am
by giszo
Ah :D It looks working :)

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:21 am
by proxy
what video mode have you enabled? if you have gotten it to work with better than VGA modes, (like 640x480 and higher) i'd love to see this code :)

proxy

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:23 am
by giszo
800x600x32 :)

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:47 am
by proxy
any chance of you sharing the code? I've been toying with video mode switching on and off, and finally finished my v8086 monitor such that i can switch to a VGA mode pretty reliably.

proxy

Re:VMware Video Driver

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 12:00 pm
by giszo
The source is from the X server. You can download it or i can show it you :)