The i810fb driver is now part of linux development tree

Antonino Daplas — Thu, 02 Jan 2003 14:58:39 -0000

The Intel 810/815 framebuffer driver is now part of the linux development tree beginning with linux-2.5.54. Although it still has a few bugs to iron out, (mostly in the framebuffer console layer), it is already usable as a primary console driver.

A few changes are necessary in boot parameter handling, but essentially, usage is the same as with i810fb-lite. See the file linux/Documentation/fb/intel810.txt for more information on this.

Please take note that the 2.5 framebuffer framework underwent a massive rewrite, so expect the unexpected (ie, fbset will not work totally when changing the console).

For users of the i810 gfxdriver for DirectFB, please use the i810fb-lite compatible version.

Thanks to all people who submitted patches and helped me test the driver.

And a Happy New Year to all.

Tony

PS: The agpgart module needs one minor fix for i810fb to compile. Edit drivers/char/agp/intel-agp.c, line 1467 and remove the 'static' part in:

static int __init agp_intel_init(void)

This should be fixed in future versions of the kernel.

Video Overlay Support for the Intel 810 and 815 Framebuffer

Antonino Daplas — Wed, 15 May 2002 23:52:04 -0000

The i810 Framebuffer Device Driver project aims to provide Intel 810 and 815 framebuffer driver support to the Linux kernel.

Video Overlay Interface support has been added for i810fb-0.0.25. A new version of the i810 gfxdriver for DirectFB that uses this inteface for its overlay layer is also released. The layer has the following features:

* YUV imagefomats: packed (YUY2 and UYVY) and planar (YV12, or mpeg-2, and I420)
* Hardware scaling and pixel-accurate positioning
* Translucency using a global alpha factor
* Destination colorkeying
* Color Adjustment (brightness, contrast and saturation)

If you use your i810/i815 box to play movies, give this a try. I have tested this with mplayer. Xine, also a Sourceforge project, is another player that might have support for DirectFB. For more information, check out the documentation included with each package.

Check out the packages at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb

Tony

Released: "Lite" version of the i810/i815 Framebuffer Driver

Antonino Daplas — Fri, 22 Mar 2002 16:10:06 -0000

The i810/i815 Framebuffer Driver for the Linux kernel has undergone a major overhaul. The old packages are replaced with spanking new versions. One of them is the the "Lite" version, i810fb-lite. This package is a lean, mean, stripped-down driver that still packs the same functionality as the primary driver, i810fb. Except for the absence of the Display Rotation Code and the Hardware interface, it still possesses the same features as the mainstream one.

The "Lite" version will work concurrently with XFree86, even in its unmodified form. This means that the hassle of patching and recompiling XFree86 is not necessary.

For more information on how to use this driver, please read the included documentation: the README file, and the intel8x0.txt file which can be found in linux/Documentation/fb.

Note: For users of the i810fb package, the "Lite" version is a vastly improved replacement since it offers a very significant increase in usability and stability. For users of the i810fb-agpgart package who still want to avail of the full features of the driver, such as the gfxdriver for DirectFB, then get the i810fb package.

The packages can be grabbed at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb. All patches for the linux kernel (2.4.9 to 2.4.18) are provided. The old patches will not work for these new versions.

Tony

Released: Version 0.0.20 of i810/i815 Framebuffer Device

Antonino Daplas — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 05:47:45 -0000

The Intel 810/815 Framebuffer Driver attempts to add Framebuffer support for the Linux kernel.

The newest version supports console display rotation by 90 degrees to the left or to the right, or a full 180 degrees (upside down).

As of version 0.0.20, these is a feature summary of the i810fb-agpgart driver:

- Supports horizontal resolutions up to 1600 in multiples of 8 if "NonStandard Video Modes" is enabled.
- Supports color depths of 8, 16, 24 and 32 bits per pixel
- Supports accelerated (8, 16 and 24 bpp only) and unaccelerated modes
- MTRR support
- Utilizes user-entered monitor specifications to automatically calculate video timings
- Utilizes kernel agpgart services
- Can coexist with xfree86 running with the native i810 xfree86 driver or the xfbdev driver. A patched xfree86 driver is required and is provided by the same project (xfree86 4.1 and 4.2 only).
- Hardware cursor support
- Hardware panning support to speed up text scrolling
- Supports Tiled memory
- A DirectFB (http://www.directfb.org) gfxdriver is currently in development as part of this project.
- Supports Variable Display Aspect Ratios
- Supports Console Display Rotation

Check out http://sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb and for information/installation instructions, please see http://i810fb.sourceforge.net

Tony

Released: Version 0.0.13 of Intel 810/815 Framebuffer driver

Antonino Daplas — Tue, 18 Dec 2001 20:40:46 -0000

The i810fb driver version 0.0.13 features several enhancements which improve stability, usability and interfacing with clients. These are:

1. Resource Manager. This guarantees clients a single hardware lock per client per device which should eliminate multiple processes accessing the device simultaneously. It's similar to DRM although DRM, undoubtedly, is more powerful.

2. DMA interface. Clients residing in userland will be able to utilize the i810's acceleration engine via this interface. However, as an added safety feature, packets trasmitted through this DMA interface will be verified by the driver first for correctness before channeling it to the hardware.

3. More robust crash handling. If the graphics device is not released by an errant client, the driver has the functionality for recovery. This should eliminate lock-ups and reboots resulting from these conditions.

4. An improved DirectFB gfxdriver. The previous release of the i810 gfxdriver was highly unstable. The newest release utilizes the mentioned interfaces vastly improving its stability and usability.

You can get the packages at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb. For more information, please see the Release Notes and the accompanying README file in each package.

Released: Redesigned i810/i815 Linux Framebuffer Driver

Antonino Daplas — Mon, 10 Dec 2001 21:27:03 -0000

The Intel 810/815 Linux Framebuffer driver has been redesigned to produce a driver which is inherently cleaner, more stable and more usable than the older versions. New in this release are:

1. It utilizes the kernel agpgart services instead of having it's own. Code reuse instead of code rewrite.

2 It has a basic interface available for userland applications to query the kernel driver to release or reacquire the graphics device as needed.
3. It requires that applications in need of accessing the graphics device has to be aware of the existence of the i810 framebuffer driver and consequently use the interface as mentioned in the above.

To support the second and third feature, a modified ("i810fb-aware") xfree86-4.1.0 driver is also included.

The package is available for kernel versions 2.4.9, 2.4.10, 2.4.12, 2.4.13, 2.4.14 and 2.4.16. It's available at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb.

For more details, refer to the "README" file at the top directory of the package. Also, check out http://i810fb.sourceforge.net for more information.
Tony

Intel 810 framebuffer driver support for the Intel 815

Antonino Daplas — Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:31:19 -0000

Release v0.0.8 of the Intel 810 framebuffer driver adds support for Intel 815 chipsets. The patches are courtesy of Michael Vogt (mvogt@acm.org).

Aside from the features of the previous release, this version also adds hardware y-panning support which is enabled by specifying a virtual vertical resolution greater than the actual vertical resolution. This feature will increase scrolling speed in the order of 10-20 times faster or more.

You can find the package at the Sourceforge project site, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb. Please read the release Notes and Changelog for installation instructions.

Framebuffer for Intel 810 released

Antonino Daplas — Mon, 12 Nov 2001 18:58:37 -0000

Released: Linux Kernel Framebuffer driver for the Intel 810 chipsets:

- Supports a range of horizontal resolutions from 640 to 1600 in multiples of 8
- Supports bits per pixel values of 2, 4, 8 and 16
- Supports accelerated and unaccelerated modes
- Supports mtrr
- Utilizes monitor specifications to automatically compute modelines
- Independent agp code (linking to agpgart is not necessary)
- Can coexist with xfree86 running with native i810 drivers under certain
precautions
- hardware cursor

Check it out at http://i810fb.sourceforge.net and at the Sourceforge project site, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/i810fb

Tony
adaplas@pol.net

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