Hi all. As you may have noticed, recently I've been working on a reworked version of sm712fb, and planned to convert it to a DRM/KMS driver. Besides using it on embedded/non-x86 systems, I thought it would be a good idea to support histrocial x86 laptops with this VGA chipset as well, so I've acquired a machine for testing. However, soon I found a nasty problem. The BIOS does not reset the chip on boot! Like most graphics controller of that era, sm712 chipset has a VGA compatible mode and a 2D framebuffer mode. The power-on default is VGA. The BIOS writer just assumed this, and does nothing to reinitialize it. If one uses the framebuffer driver under Linux, once the machine reboots, the entire LCD panel becomes a piece of garbage. AFAIK, the framebuffer driver would be running throughout the kernel's life- cycle, is it really possible to workaround this issue by restoring on VGA state upon reboot? Thanks, Tom Li
