1.4.3

2.0.0 pre releases

Pre releases of svgalib-2 will be called 1.9.x, with no pre, but they are still very experimental.

The main user noticeable feature for svgalib-2.0 is multi video card support. Any supported card (even with vesa driver) can be primary card, but I tested successful secondary support only with the following drivers:

I also expect that the following drivers should work, but have not yet tested this:

1.9.25 - lrmi-0.9 should work. Module compiles with kernel 2.6.17. More PCI IDs for new Radeons and Geforces. Makefiles cleanups.

source - 987084 bytes.

patch from 1.9.24 - 5258 bytes.

1.9.24 - Revert lrmi to 0.6 (0.9 is compile time option). Better support for Radeon X chipset. Module fix for compiling on 2.6.14 and later.

source - 986612 bytes.

patch from 1.9.23 - 31580 bytes.

1.9.23 - Includes a lot of patches from Hans de Goede. Including making of nohelper a runtime option instead of compile time, 64 bit cleanups, many drivers bug fixing, and a lot of other improvements. There is also an update of lrmi from version 0.6 to 0.9.

source - 982053 bytes.

patch from 1.9.21 - 99656 bytes.

1.9.21 - Module changes for compiling with really new kernels. VESA driver now works in NO_HELPER mode. Patches from Stas Sergeev to get VESA driver to work on some cards, and from Sergey E. Galanov to support programmable mode timings with VESA driver and VBE3 cards.

source - 950274 bytes.

fixed patch from 1.9.20 - 6748 bytes.

1.9.20 - More fixes to the build system. New driver for VIA unichrome chipset. Trident driver now supports digital output (LCD). More Radeon and Geforce chipsets supported, including the NV40 architecture (Geforce 6800, etc.). i810 driver now works. There's a compile time option to revert to using root privileges instead of the kernel helper.

source - 952296 bytes.

fixed patch from 1.9.19 - 198857 bytes.

1.9.19 - again, mainly fixes to the build system. The kernel module now works with kernel 2.6, and will hopefully build out of the box on any distribution/kernel. Please report any build failures. New ati and nVidia chipsets should work. Digital output of those (DVI, or internal notebook) still not supported.

source - 935305 bytes.

patch from 1.9.18 - 16790 bytes.

1.9.18 includes a few updates and fixes for some chipsets (laguna, g400, i810, r128, rage, trident, savage). There are also changes to the kernel module build system, in order to make it easier to build. The old build system is still available in Makefile.alt. I think it will still not compile out of the box on 2.4 kernels with rmap vm (like RH kernels, for example). Please report any build issues. Ultrasparc support is not in, yet, but is just around the corner.

source - 933786 bytes.

patch from 1.9.17 - 33760 bytes.

1.9.17 includes fixes for a few drivers (trident, r128 mainly) to support more chipsets. There are also fixes in the Makefiles which fix some installation problems.

source - 921750 bytes.

patch from 1.9.16 - 27226 bytes.

1.9.16 has support for interrupt based retrace waiting. This is known to work on Matrox, Ati, SiS and nVidia cards. It is also working on alpha systems based on apecs chipset.

source - 923184 bytes.

patch from 1.9.15 - 39096 bytes.

1.9.15, includes new drivers for i810/815, and Permedia2v. The rage 128 driver now works on Radeon 7500.

source - 924337 bytes.

patch from 1.9.14 - 33546 bytes.

In 1.9.14, the nvidia driver adds support for GeForce4 chipsets and the sis driver adds support for the sis315 range. In addition, some bugs were fixed for the banshee and rage drivers. The core system now restores hardware cursor and vga tweaked modes properly after a VT switch. (The patch is big, since the drivers were moved to a new subdirectory).

source - 905603 bytes.

patch from 1.9.13 - 336858 bytes.

1.9.13 has no new drivers, but many fixes in both the base system, and many drivers. The nvidia, trident and savage drivers now support newer models.

source - 918791 bytes.

patch from 1.9.12 - 32390 bytes.

1.9.12 includes a driver for Rendition V2x00. There are also various bug fixes for some chipsets, including the system crash and sync lost in the r128 driver.

source - 914760 bytes.

patch from 1.9.11 - 43590 bytes.

1.9.11 includes a driver for trident PCI cards, a few bug fixes (hopefully the r128 crash is fixed). There is also a non working i810 driver.

source - 929663 bytes.

patch from 1.9.10 - 61745 bytes.

1.9.10 includes a driver for matrox millennium, the g400 driver now supports matrox mystique, and the savage driver now supports virge cards as well. The r128 and g400 drivers work on PowerPC.

source - 884800 bytes.

patch from 1.9.9 - 64457 bytes.

1.9.9 includes a new driver for S3 savage series chipsets. It is also the first that runs on PowerPC.

source - 870198 bytes.

patch from 1.9.8 - 16930 bytes.

1.9.8 has a good r128 driver (all modes and return to text mode), and the nv3 driver now supports GeForce cards. Hardware cursor support added to g400.c and r128.c. A new demo, buildcursor, by Don Secrest to demonstrate using the cursor api.

source - 861823 bytes.

patch from 1.9.7 - 13586 bytes.

1.9.7 includes new drivers for Matrox and Ati rage 128 cards. Matrox (g400.c) is tested and works on a G450 16MB sdram card. The rage 128 (r128.c) was only tested on a AIW 128 pro 32MB. Only 8/15/16 bits modes work, and return to text mode still fails. Running vga_reset, or switching to XFree86 and back fixes the text mode.

source - 857932 bytes.

patch from 1.9.6 - 51067 bytes.

1.9.6 includes an fbdev driver, a driver for laguna chipset, a new mouse driver, and some fixes for nvidia, banshee drivers.

source - 832342 bytes.

patch from 1.9.5 - 194689 bytes. (the patch is large because it is includes all man files gunzipped, I am not sure it works correctly.)

1.9.5 changes config file parsing to add the include option, as well as selecting a config file with environment variable (SVGALIB_CARD)

There are also some fixes to setting of the termio parametrs, as suggested by Davin. More work is still needed in this area.

source - 930671 bytes.

patch from 1.9.4 - 29903 bytes.

1.9.4 Changes the name of the device to /dev/svga (instead of /dev/svgalib_helper) and the major device number from 60 to 209. I also removed all BACKGROUND stuff, and I intend to remove the alpha support as well.

functional changes include addition of cursor support, fixes in vgadraw for getscansegment and drawscansegment to work in all color depths. See my post to the linux-svgalib mailing list for an explanation of the cursor functions (until I'll documnet it in man pages).

source - 934180 bytes.

patch from 1.9.3 - 36133 bytes.

1.9.3 Only includes a few more small fixes. source - 934086 bytes.

1.9.2 adds the option of using a pipe to read the keyboard - svgalib keyboard driver reads from /tmp/svga_kbd (which should be a pipe) instead of from the keyboard, thus enabling emulating keyboard with some program (ps2key, joy2key, or simply echo > /tmp/svga_kbd). This only works for programs using svgalib keyboard_ functions, and not getchar or vga_getch.

1.9.1 can work with a secondary video card. Not very useful until I sort out the novccontrol, but still something.

In order to use the secondary card it needs to be initialized by it own bios. If your BIOS does not initialize all video cards (most don't), the program to do it is in the x86emu package. Get x86emu-0.7.tar.gz from scitechsoft, compile and run the program vbios.x86emu. (I have problems in compiling x86emu-0.7, so here's a local copy of x86emu-0.6.tar.gz). If the video card is disabled by the pci, use setpci -s xx:yy.z COMMAND=3 to enable it. Then add the option secondary to the config file, and use chipset and pcistart statements to make sure svgalib uses the right card.

There are also all the changes in the 1.4.2 pre releases.

This first 1.9.0, is probably not very useful if you are not interested in following (and helping) svgalib development.

1.4.3

Here is svgalib-1.4.3, released at 2nd of June 2001.

It should also be available at ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/libs/graphics in a few days.

source - 840282 bytes

patch from 1.4.2 release - 200361 bytes.

binaries linked with libc 5 - 168039 bytes.

Changes from 1.4.2 include:

I don't intend to work on svgalib-1.4.x anymore. Only if any big bug will be found, I will release a new version to fix it.

The r128 driver in 1.4.3 has serious bugs that might cause system hang on console switch and sync lose on some mode changes. Please use this driver, r128.c, instead of the one in the distribution.

Last update 24 December 2005.

Matan Ziv-Av matan@svgalib.org Other stuff by me.