ybin: Blessing /dev/hda2 with Holy Penguin Pee...

This is a plea for help from anyone with any Linux PPC experience.  I decided to try and install bootsplash the other day, and I've been running into nothing but problems ever since.

The problem goes like this:  in order to work properly, bootsplash needs the console to be running at a colour depth of at least 16 bits per pixel.  Depending on where you get your information from, an iMac (Rev.B) is capable of either 24 or 32bpp.  The default size for a bootsplash image is 1024x768, the iMac monitor defaults to 1024x768@75Hz.  So far, so good.  However, the atyfb frame buffer driver (ATI Rage Pro chipset) defaults to 8bpp.  That's not so good.

Thankfully, Gentoo has info on bootsplash on PPC, and they say to use append="video:driver:1024x768-32" to get it working (where driver is replaced by the name of the framebuffer driver, in this case atyfb).  And here the first problem pops up.  atyfb doesn't support choosing video modes in this format, so I had to go digging through ancient documentation to find out that you need to use vmode:X,cmode:Y instead.  Cue further digging, looking for the appropriate vmode for an iMac (Rev. B).  Eventually, I find it on the old Linux PPC FAQ-O-Matic (which deals with LinuxPPC and sometimes MkLinux, proving how dated this info is).  Everything should be fine now, right?  Wrong.

Appending vmode works fine, but the moment I try to append any cmode greater than 8bpp I start being told that I've selected an invalid vmode (and the frame buffer drops to 1024x768 @ 60Hz, which causes the monitor to go into low power mode, although the colour depth does actually change, not that that makes any difference when you can't see anything).  So, I'm looking for anyone who's gotten atyfb to display a console with greater than 256 colours in a recent kernel.  (All info I can find is for either 2.2 or early 2.4 kernels.)

Anyone?

Update:  Oops.  Seems I forgot to test out the vmode:17,cmode:16 on my stock 2.6.9 kernel.  They work fine on there, which means that it's the bootsplash patch itself that's trying to change the framebuffer refresh rate.  Given the reasons the patch wouldn't compile on PPC prior to kernel version 2.6.7 (the patch contained explicit references to vesafb, and VESA is an x86-only standard), I'm can't say I'm terribly surprised.