accessing legacy(?) VGA input status register 1 on 945GM/xf86-video-intel

[Theo Veenker]

Jesse Barnes wrote:
> On Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:00 am Theo Veenker wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have an application that presents audio-visual stimuli to subjects. To
>> be able to precisely synchronize the audio and graphics the application
>> needs to know when a vsync occurs. My application (from 1994) doesn't yet
>> use libdrm. I'm using a real-time module which (among other things)
>> monitors the vretrace bit in the VGA input status register 1 at 0x3DA and
>> signals the application on each vsync event. It works fine on most graphics
>> hardware.
>>
>> Now I need to make this application work on a laptop with an Intel 945GM.
>> The vretrace bit at IO address 0x3DA doesn't work (under X) unless I
>> connect an external VGA display. Then it works, but it reflects the retrace
>> of the external monitor and not that of the laptop's LCD screen.
>>
>> Since also drmWaitVBlank() didn't work for me on this system, I applied the
>> change hinted in
>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-June/025166.html to the
>> xf86-video-intel driver (2.4.2). That makes drmWaitVBlank() work (but only
>> after I briefly run a GL application like glxgears first).
> 
> There's some code in the xf86-video-intel driver to disable vblank interrupts 
> when no 3D client is running (look for want_vblank_interrupts in i830_dri.c, 
> you can either remove the code from I830DRISetVBlankInterrupt or make that 
> field unconditionally true).  Maybe that's what you already did.

Yes that's what I did. With the stock driver drm vblank would only work while
running, for instance, glxgears. After the 'fix' I just need to run glxgears
once and after that it works. I can live with that.

> 
>> I understand the LCD screen is on pipe B and the VGA screen on pipe A.
>> Can I somehow swap current behaviour so that when I monitor IO address
>> 0x3DA I can detect vretraces for pipe B instead of for pipe A? That would
>> save me the trouble of hacking DRM into this legacy aplication.
> 
> I think the status bit in 0x3da will correspond to the pipe VGA is assigned to 
> in VGACNTRL (the headers should have the info you need, if not check out the 
> docs at http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org).

Thanks for the info. Here is what I did. In i830_driver.c I830PreInit() below
RestoreHWState() I added this:
   xf86DrvMsg(pScrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING, "HACK: setting VGA_PIPE_B_SELECT.\n");
   OUTREG(VGACNTRL, pI830->saveVGACNTRL | VGA_PIPE_B_SELECT);

Unfortunately the VGA input status register 1 bit 3 still reflects the
retraces for the external VGA monitor, instead of the laptop's display panel.
So this is problably not correct or I missed something.

In Xorg.0.log I read "Output VGA is connected to pipe A" and "Output LVDS is
connected to pipe B". Is there a way to swap them, how? And if so would it make
a differrence; I mean is it actually possible to have the VGA input status
register 1 connected to the LVDS?

Theo