Hi, please find my answer in the text below.
On 27.08.2004, you wrote: > On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 09:04:23PM -0500, Peter Krummrich wrote: >> Hi, >> >> seeing all your discussing new kernels, I was wondering about the easiest >> way to switch between kernels. I am still using 2.2.20 from Woody, but >> would be interested in testing 2.4.x or even 2.6.x kernels on my Amiga. >> How can I get (load .deb archive?), unpack (use dselect or dpkg?) and >> install a new kernel with the option to easily switch back to my old >> kernel in case the new one does not work? >> >> I am mostly interested in a new frame buffer device driver. The clgenfb >> that comes with Woody (1.4?) seems to have some serious problems. > > Can you be more specific here? Kernel 2.2.25 is the latest in that > series for the Amiga. I seem to recall that earlier versions had > debugging turned on, so that whenever you switched consoles, you got a > bunch of debugging output to one of them. Other then that, I used the > 2.2.25 for some time before moving up to 2.4.27 which I compiled from > source for myself. > > Note that there are advantages to compiling your own kernel. Saving RAM > is one of them. The Debian stock kernels have many configuration > options turned on to support a wide range of hardware that you probably > do not have. Re-building the kernel with these options turned off can > save significant RAM. This is especially important if you only have 12 > or 16 meg to begin with. > > --Lance > > The kernel I am currently using is 2.2.20 with clgen v1.4 ?, which comes from the CDROM distribution of Woody R2. I also had problems with earlier versions of clgen with debugging turned on (was it 1.3 that came with the 2.2.10 kernel?). To get around this, I changed the code in clgenfb.c and rebuilt the kernel. The clgen version I am using now is 1.4 ? (obviously someone was not sure which version comes next and added a question mark). At first glance, the driver seems to work with my Picasso II graphics board (A2000 with Blizzard 2060 - 68060 with 50 MHz). The console display in low resolution (640x480-60) is o.k. until the scrolling starts. In some cases, scrolling messes up some lines with some random changing of pixels. The problem becomes much worse when switching to higher resolutions. I used fbset to change to 1024x768-70. The lines are displayed o.k. until scrolling starts, which completely destroys the lines. Lines that are scrolled end up in a random distribution of pixels. By the way - transfer of arguments from amiboot to clgen does not seem to work. The kernel gets the monitorcap and mode:high arguments (tested by cat /proc/cmdline), but clgen still starts with 640x480-60. Somewhere I read that 2.4 kernels may come with a different version of clgen. So I wanted to test some newer kernels that may come with a better clgen - without spending the effort to rebuild the kernel. I would like to try some kernel images first to make sure the frame buffer works. When I find a good one, I may spend the effort to rebuild it from source. Peter
