From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 14 5:40:46 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from flood.ping.uio.no (flood.ping.uio.no [129.240.78.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB15F15583 for ; Fri, 14 May 1999 05:40:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from des@flood.ping.uio.no) Received: (from des@localhost) by flood.ping.uio.no (8.9.3/8.9.1) id OAA42759; Fri, 14 May 1999 14:40:37 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from des) To: Kelly Yancey Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: modex support (again) References: From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Date: 14 May 1999 14:40:36 +0200 In-Reply-To: Kelly Yancey's message of "Tue, 11 May 1999 17:50:44 -0400 (EDT)" Message-ID: Lines: 31 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 19.34 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Kelly Yancey writes: > Hmm. I sent this message a few days ago and it has been silently ignored. > Should I consider that an OK to extern the get_mode_param function in > vga_isa.c? Or should I take that as a mass "go ahead, we're not going to > commit the code anyway?" :( Hmm, well, I don't like to say "go ahead, we're not going to commit the code anyway", but I can't see the use of adding Mode X support - I feel that the gain in functionality is too small to justify the added complexity. You'll need to add bits to the video_info structure to describe the encoding. AFAIK, the current model can only describe linear and plane-per-channel encodings accurately, whereas Mode X uses a weird interlaced encoding. The designers of the VGA chipset ought to be taken out and shot. You'll need to hack everything that hooks into syscons but doesn't explicitly set the video mode to check for Mode X so they won't shoot themselves in the foot trying to address it as a linear mode. To summarize, it seems like a lot of trouble just to get 40 additional scanlines and square pixels on obsolete hardware - anything that doesn't support 'options VESA' was already obsolete five years ago. It's not going to make FreeBSD a better desktop OS (desktop users use X, not syscons) and its' not going to make FreeBSD a better server OS (no, a prettier splash screen does not make your server faster). OBTW, Mode Q has square pixels and linear addressing. I won't mind adding support for Mode Q :) DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@flood.ping.uio.no To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message