NVidia driver status

Can you guys clarify the status of this. For the benefit of others, there’s really 3 components to the driver:

• The video card BIOS initialization, done either by directly running the x86 code on the card or via secret voodoo provided by NVidia.

• The framebuffer driver with various 2D acceleration. i.e, what we might approximately call the VDU driver in RISC OS.

• 3D acceleration, e.g. IyonixMesa, which we can ignore for purposes of this discussion.

I know that JWB was at one point working on an x86 emulator so he could move to the 1st solution of the 1st component – the second method is the way it was done in early RISC OS 5 (and is still done?). Plus it would allow a broader range of NVidia video cards to be used with RISC OS 5.

I don’t believe there’s anything secretive about the 2nd part – there is for example the free nv driver in the X Window system. Although there’s probably some complex code in this to make stuff work well.

Thanks.