We currently just enabled the PCI bus on our MPC8270 custom board. We intend to put a video chip in the PCI bus (XGI Volari Z7). For testing, we got the Z7 PCI demo board. We are using u-boot and Linux kernel 2.4.25 in our system. I had a pre-conception that the Linux kernel will be able to handle the VGA console by itself without any BIOS help (or in this case U-boot). After configuring the kernel to support VGA console, the PCI video card did not give any display (probably no sync at all). AFAIK, the PCI bus is working correctly. I did test a Netgear PCI network card to verify it (and it passed).

1. Does our system require a VGA BIOS (aside from U-boot) to display console (and later on to display a GUI, i.e. X Windows, Tiny X)?

2. Is it possible to configure the Kernel to do the PCI video card initialization without involving U-boot so that it will at least display a VGA console 80x25?

3. Do I actually need to write a driver for the Z7 in U-boot (similar to CT9000, SMI 710/712/810) to configure the video chip correctly before Linux takes over?

4. I still like to send U-boot console messages to the MPC8270 (SCC) serial port and just start the VGA console once Linux takes over. Is this possible?