[Debian-ppc64-devel] Disabling frame buffer

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 01:37:27PM +0200, Roberto Suarez Soto wrote:
> 
> 	I'm still having problems with the display. The beast we have here
> seems designed for heavy CAD use (has a Matrox G450 card), but I can't even
> make it display text mode correctly :-/ fbset works, in the sense that it can
> change resolutions, but the characters are still all messed up.
> 
> 	I wonder: would it be possible to use "normal" (i.e., non-fb) display,
> or to deactivate matroxfb via some "video=..." option at boot? IIRC, there is
> no such thing as "pure text mode" in the pSeries and many ppc computers, but
> maybe there is some "safe" mode that I can try :-?

Try serial console : booting with console=ttyS0,115200n8 or something such :)

matroxfb is problematic, since the maintainer of it didn't really follow up
with the new 2.6 kernels fbdev infrastructure. Still, could you fill a bug
report against kernel-source-2.6.11, with [powerpc] in the title describing
your problem and nothing that you use my unofficial ppc64 kernels ? 

> 	The worst thing is that I clearly remember have done something that
> displayed two penguins in screen correctly, but I for the life of me cannot
> remember what it was. Maybe Cajus' installer? :-m Cajus, does your installer
> have some "safe" video mode, or the like? Does it simply use a general VESA fb
> mode?

Nope, there is no such thing as vesafb, there is offb though, maybe ofonly as
argument was the trick ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther