Running 9front on a Dell Latitude D630

2015-05-12

It took me a few tries to get it running, but now it is (sans wireless/bluetooth).

Here's the secret sauce:

Fix plan9.ini

The bootloader runs and the kernel appears to begin loading, and then it all gets hung up right after the memory is displayed.

To fix this, you need to pass '\*acpi=' to the system by either interrupting the boot sequence and typing it yourself, or by modifying plan9.ini[1].

Add the monitor to vgadb

The display for the D630 doesn't appear to have any analogue in the vga database, so we'll have to add the monitor[2] ourselves.

Here's what I added:

d630=1440x900
	clock=102
	shb=1488 ehb=1520 ht=1832
	vrs=903 vre=909 vt=926
	hsync=+ vsync=+
	lcd=1

Add the following to plan9.ini and bask in the beauty:

monitor=d630
vgasize=1440x900x32

[1] modifying plan9.ini

[2] add the monitor