low level hardware access in linux

[MealMan401]

Hey I was wondering if it is possible to access hardware directly on a comp running some linux. Particularly the graphics hardware.

Basically I would like to be able to write directly to the video hardware while in VGA mode.
I did this in a dos enviroment but got tripped up on having to deal with far pointers and all that 16 bit jazz.

I am trying to keep away from using opengl or any other graphics packages as this is a purely academic adventure into controling pc hardware in C++/C


Thanks.

[Kernel_Killer]

I guess your best bet would be to get the drivers for that particular chipset, and study the libraries and such made for that particular card.

[MealMan401]

Well, I only want to play with VGA which is a pretty simple and open standard. The real question was/is if i can do that same type things i did in dos (change video modes, write to video addresses that corespond to coodinates on the screen, and play with buffers) on a linux machine.

From the lack of online materials on this for linux as compared to DOS graphics programming tutorials, I am thinking its a dead end approach. So maybe I should be looking for a unbloated (fast would be nice) graphics package for X.