[Dri-users] Video option for a big endian machine?

[lausgans at gmail.com]

Thanks much for the answers, guys!

> Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu>:
> 
> With nouveau, you can generally get older cards to work

Took a bunch of gf2mx and fx5500 cards I had access to. With Noveau they fail with "GPU lockup". The kernel version is 3.16.7.
The issue chain is nouveau_fbcon_imageblit(): nouveau_fbcon_gpu_lockup() is called -> nv04_fbcon_imageblit(): while (dsize) { ... ret = RING_SPACE(chan, iter_len + 1); if (ret) return ret; /* -EBUSY at some iteration */ ... } -> nouveau_dma_wait() -> while (chan->dma.free < size) { get = READ_GET(chan, &prev_get, &cnt); if (unlikely(get == -EBUSY)) return -EBUSY; /* HERE */ ... }

> Dave Airlie <airlied at gmail.com>:
> 
> On 12 February 2015 at 00:44, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:53 AM,  <lausgans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello.
>>> 
>>> I'm looking for a PCI or AGP video card that would work on a Linux port for a big endian architecture (HP PA-RISC). Unfortunately the stock video options (ATI FireGL X1 and X3) give an incredibly slow unaccelerated 2D due to failure to kickstart the command processor (radeon open source driver). Neither folks from linux-parisc@ nor from dri-devel@ camps know how to fix this.
>>> 

>> 
>> The X1 and X3 are really old asics and the risc specific versions
>> tended to have special firmware for that platform that the open driver
>> does not handle properly.  You might have better luck using a more
>> modern GPU (e.g., an R5xx or newer based asic) with an x86 vbios.

If the above is not some Nouveau miss, then it looks like it's some general architecture / chipset related code issue regarding ring buffer. I wonder how network card driver works then. Opinions?
There is a chipset specific drivers porting note: https://kernel.org/doc/ols/2002/ols2002-pages-183-190.pdf Though some parts of it are about IA64.
CC to linux-parisc@

> If memory serves PA-RISC had some restrictions on PCI BAR windows, it
> wasn't just endianness problems.

The only thing I've heard regarding this was:
"The FireGL X1 / 256 AGP pro card used in the C8000 is a standard ATI part, but has a special video BIOS that reduces the PCI BAR space used by the card. The C8000 I/O space totals 256Mb, so using it all for the graphics wouldn't allow for any boot devices, etc."
But then it's all on the vendor behalf, as the driver could read space sizes via PCI info functions.

> 
> Dave.