[wplug] Installfest: SPARCstation IPX

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 23:43 -0400, Zach wrote:
> I also have a Sparcstation IPX, it has no OS on it (not 100% sure) but
> there is some problem when I booted it up years ago (someone had a Sun
> monitor - I don't have one so can't test it easily.) and it went
> through BIOS check, then started booting and it complained about a
> framebuffer. Don't know if the video card is bad or what. I have a Sun
> keyboard for it but nothing else. Would like some help also.

A GPU framebuffer is often required for non-PCs to work.  I.e., a great
majority of non-PCs don't have a "text mode" on the GPU (that's what the
serial port is for ;).  So if you want to display anything -- including
the boot-up sequence -- your kernel has to setup the GPU's graphical
frame buffer just to do text.



-- 
Bryan J. Smith         Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org   http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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        Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution