Matrox Parhelia XFree86 Busmastering kernel module?

[Eric Anholt]

On Sat, 2003-10-11 at 19:56, Igor Pokrovsky wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 05:40:30PM +0200, Daniel Lang wrote:
> > Hiho,
> > 
> > There seems no freebsd-xfree list, but this is only XFree related,
> > it's rather kernel oriented.
> > 
> > Matrox offers a RedHat-Linux driver for their Parhelia based boards
> > (Parhelia, P650, P750). The XFree86 driver module mtx_drv.o itself
> > is OS independent and works with FreeBSD, as successfully
> > tested on my desk, even with a multihead configuration. :)
> > 
> > Alas, to use acceleration (2D xaa as well as 3D dri, OpenGL,
> > etc) it requires a kernel module to enable bus mastering on
> > the card. (I don't know if this is a common thing with Linux,
> > or with some graphic boards? I am not aware of bus mastering
> > is required for AGP boards, isn't AGP a dedicated bus anyway?)
> 
> AFAIK, you can enable bus mastering using pciconf(8) by setting appropriate registers.
> Why do you need any additional kernel module? Or I'm completely missing the point?
> 
> -ip

Busmastering is not an important part of kernel modules used for aiding
accelerating graphics, if it is at all.  Notably, XFree86 enables
busmastering itself for all the cards it supports that need it (radeon,
r128, mga, i8x0, etc.).  What that module is more likely for is doing
things that require kernel support, such as handling of interrupts to
efficiently use the card's DMA support and sharing of resources between
various competing direct-rendering clients.

I'm not aware of anyone working on Matrox binary driver support.

-- 
Eric Anholt                                eta at lclark.edu          
http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/         anholt at FreeBSD.org