watchthelight 2026-10-22
Upstream scout, 2026-10-22: what other projects have learned about the panel.
- VedCloud's Meteor Lake port keeps the panel on the firmware framebuffer: i915 runs with display discovery skipped and a small framebuffer kext (LatitudeMTLFB) scans out. Their kernel 1.0.15 reads the firmware console's address, pitch and size and starts i915's stolen-memory allocator after it, which is what got them a GPU-composited desktop. That's the same shape as NMIntelFB here. README, v1.0.14
- kitsuneislife/nmx-intel lit a Raptor Lake panel with i915 through NullMoth's port, then parked it because compositing ran in software; their live route copies frames composited elsewhere to the Intel panel. repo
- Linux's firmware-framebuffer checks (drop the BIOS fb on a wrong depth/bpp, disable the plane when the readout fails, keep new framebuffers out of stolen) landed in lutzbichler/drm-kmod's pr/7.3 branch: 2b20606b8b, 9eb4720580, b63eb2f992. They're 7.3 code and we build on 6.12, so read them as a checklist rather than a backport.
- WhateverXe 0.4.0 drives Tiger Lake laptop panels by retraining eDP through Apple's driver (VBT panel facts, scrambler and framing bits matched to DPCD 0x10A). It doesn't adopt the firmware mode and doesn't cover Meteor/Arrow Lake ("Not Planned"). 0.4.0
- NootedGreen #21/#22: the Apple Tiger Lake donor approach stops before a modeset on real Tiger Lake and freezes on Raptor Lake. More reason to keep the panel on the firmware's mode. #21
Full write-up: https://github.com/watchthelight-labs/research/blob/main/scout/xe/2026-10-22.md