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+.TH VBETOOL "1" "31 December 2004" "vbetool 0.2" "User Commands"
+.SH NAME 
+vbetool - run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware state
+
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.B "vbetool [[vbestate save|restore]|[vbemode set|get]|[vgamode]|[dpms on|off|standby|suspend|reduced]|[post [romfile]]|[vgastate on|off]|[vbefp panelid|panelsize|getbrightness|setbrightness|invert]]"
+
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.B vbetool
+uses lrmi in order to run code from the video BIOS. Currently, 
+it is able to alter DPMS states, save/restore video card state and 
+attempt to initialize the video card from scratch.
+
+.SH OPTIONS
+.B vbetool
+takes the following options:
+.IP "vbestate"
+.B vbetool
+will use the VESA 0x4f0f extensions to save or restore hardware
+state. This will be sent to or read from stdin. This information is
+highly hardware specific - do not attempt to restore state saved from
+a different machine. This command will not work unless you are at a
+text console, as it interferes badly with X.
+
+.IP "dpms"
+.B vbetool
+will use the VESA 0x4f10 extensions to alter the power management
+state of your screen. "On", "off", "standby", "suspend" and "reduced"
+are acceptable further options and determine which state will be
+activated.
+
+.IP "vbemode"
+.B vbetool
+will get or set the current VESA mode. "get" will return the current
+mode number on stdout - "set" will set the mode to the next argument.
+
+.IP "vgamode"
+.B vbetool
+will set the legacy VGA mode to the following numeric argument.
+
+.IP "post"
+.B vbetool
+will attempt to run BIOS code located at c000:0003. This is the code
+run by the system BIOS at boot in order to intialise the video
+hardware. Note that on some machines (especially laptops), not all of
+this code is present after system boot - as a result, executing this
+command may result in undefined behaviour. This command must be run
+from a text console, as it will otherwise interfere with the operation
+of X. This command takes an optional argument which is the location of
+a file containing a ROM image. If provided, this image will be mapped
+to the c000 segment and used instead of the system's video BIOS.
+
+.IP "vgastate"
+.B vbetool
+will enable or disable the current video card. On most hardware, disabling
+will cause the hardware to stop responding until it is reenabled. You
+probably don't want to do this if you're using a framebuffer.
+
+.IP "vbefp"
+.B vbetool
+will execute a VESA flat panel interface call.
+.IP
+panelid will provide information about the panel
+.IP
+panelsize will provide the size of the panel
+.IP 
+getbrightness will provide the current screen brightness as an integer
+.IP
+setbrightness accepts an integer as an argument and will set the screen brightness to that
+.IP
+invert will invert the colours of the screen
+
+.SH BUGS
+Switching dpms modes may interact badly with X on some systems.
+.PP
+The vbestate command may behave in strange ways.
+.PP
+The post command may result in the execution of arbitrary code that
+happens to be lying around in the area where chunks of your video BIOS
+used to be.
+.PP
+The VESA specification does not require that "vbemode get" provides
+the correct mode if the current mode was set via some means other than
+the VESA BIOS extensions.
+.PP
+The VESA flat panel interface ceased development at the proposal stage.
+panelid and panelsize will work on many machines, but the other arguments are
+unlikely to be implemented on available hardware.
+
+.SH AUTHOR
+vbetool was written by Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>, based on
+code from read-edid by John Fremlin <john@fremlin.de>, LRMI
+(http://sourceforge.net/projects/lrmi/) and XFree
+(http://www.xfree86.org). It is released under the terms of the GNU
+General Public License.