Geode SMI video

[NZG]

Revisiting the GX1 again....
The Geode processor appears to uses SMI interrupts and microcode to do just 
about everything, which makes it less than an ideal processor for RTAI. 

Unfortunately, I have yet to see a processor yet that can beat it in it's 
price point, so I find my self again speccing one for a project.
We have deployed them on RTAI projects in the past, without incident, but I 
wanted to run this by the list to see if anyone had horror stories I didn't 
know about before getting in too deep.
Anyone?

Wasn't there some way to run the Geode in "text" mode or something to get 
around that latency that occurs with tty switching?
Does anyone remember this or have a link to it?

thx,
NZG.