[LinuxBIOS] Fwd: Could original VGA BIOS be responsible for long timeout before LinuxBIOS kicks in?

[Corey Osgood]

Coquelicot wrote:
> On Nov 21, 2007 7:46 PM, Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de> wrote:
>
>   
>> On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 08:00:14PM -0500, Corey Osgood wrote:
>>     
>>> On 11/20/07, Coquelicot <coquelicot408 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> what can be responsible for long delay before starting LinuxBIOS? I
>>>> have it on VIA EPIA M-II with LB preppended by original VGA bios
>>>> extracted from the original BIOS. The delay is ~20 seconds before I
>>>> get first message on serial console (..."In auto.c:main()" messages).
>>>>
>>>> Correct me if I am wrong: do I need VGA BIOS at all? I want my booting
>>>>         
>> No. On a head-less server for example, you usually don't care about VGA,
>> and you can easily leave it away (no VGA blob to prepend to linuxbios.rom).
>>
>> Disable VGA support in LinuxBIOS with CONFIG_CONSOLE_VGA=0 in Options.lb.
>>
>>     
>
> What about a carputer which need to be able to display graphics (X or
> DirectFB)? can I skip the VGA bios in such setup altogether? I'm
> talking about VIA EPIA M-II so I am not sure if two LB "drivers" you
> mention below (RageXL and GeoDE) can work?

Have a look the unichrome driver:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bios/20954

I can't believe I forgot about this! But anyways, as I said, I don't
think a vga bios could affect the early serial portion of LinuxBIOS, it
just doesn't make sense.

-Corey