[rescue] Non-Fcode PCI VGA in U5?

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 13:47, Meelis Roos wrote:
> Hi, it's me again with my broken Ultra 5.
> 
> My U5 has broken onboard video - most times it detects there is no
> monitor and disables the framebuffer. When it happens to detect that
> monitor is present, it works fine.

You sure it is the video that is broken ?  Pretty sure in all my playing
with U5/U10s that the monitor doesn't need detecting.  It detects the
Sun keyboard, and if that is there it uses video/kb console, and if
not it uses RS232 on the first serial port (unless directed otherwise
by the OBP NVRAM settings).

try another keyboard... check your kb connector solder points on the
mainboard, etc....

At least this is how I understood it worked.

-- Curt

> 
> So the first question - any ideas of fixing that? Chip test out OK
> (framebuffer etc), it only tells that display is not present.
> 
> I have tried to solve it wia additional PCI graphics card. Since I have
> no cards with Fcode ROM available, I have experimented with non-Fcode
> cards. I know it is not supported and the proper way would be with a
> F-Code ROM card but let's just ignore it for now.
> 
> At first I tried different ATI Mach64's (with or without PC ROM)  -
> didn't help, even after upgrading the flash prom of the U5 to the
> latest. Then I got a 3D Rage Pro 215GP like the Darwin+ mainboard has.
> It has exactly the same PCI ID as the onboard chip (1002/4750) so I
> hoped the PROM would initialize it (like it works in SRM etc).
> Unfortunately it doesn't - tried with VGA irq enabled/disabled via
> jumper and with PC ROM present and missing. Also tried leaving out the
> onboard ATI from pci probe list - it doesn't help the detection in any
> way. It's still just /pci/pci/display with no Forth words and no
> initialization.
> 
> And the second question - is there any hope of getting this card
> initialized by PROM? I have thought that hacking some F-code into
> nvramrc would be a good project to relearn Forth but I would not take
> the task if I knew it was mostly hopeless.