Silicon Motion VGA controllers and PPC architecture

[Geir Frode Raanes]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, llandre wrote:

> I'm looking for a VGA controller to use with an embedded PPC405-based system.
> I had a look at the Silicon Motion chips (712/722) and they seem very
> suited for embedded applications.

Errr - may I ask what is special about this brand?
I believe ATI is the only manufacturer of VGA chips that actually
support alternative architectures, at least PowerPC[MAC].

 http://www.ati.com/products/embedded/overview.html

> Unfortunately the techical support claims that these chips, because the
> presence of x86 BIOS, support only the x86 architecture. Anybody can
> confirm this?

I once attempted to follow the flow of a x86 BIOS.
In other words, I disassembled it. It was intriguing for a while.
You might want to do the same thing with this expansion BIOS -
after all, you are only interested in the initialization sequence.

--
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