Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 08 Nov 1998 21:47:58 +0000
From:      Donn Miller <dmm125@bellatlantic.net>
To:        David Dawes <dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>
Cc:        ports@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Ports/patches for X332servonly
Message-ID:  <3646118E.FFF8013E@bellatlantic.net>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9811081054100.424-100000@localhost> <19981109123915.A21444@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
David Dawes wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 08, 1998 at 11:05:27AM +0000, Donn Miller wrote:
> >Just trying to find out if anyone did a port and/or patch for
> >X332servonly.tgz.  It's like the full source for XFree86 but it doesn't
> >include the stuff for building shared libs.  I need the source code so I
> >can modify it to make a driver for my chipset, which is unsupported.
> >
> >BTW, building XFree86 from sratch is pretty nasty.  One minor change to
> >any of the config files in xc/config/cf sometimes throws the whole build
> >out of whack.
>
> That surprises you?
>

Well, actually, it was the X332servonly, which is missing the full lib sources
for the XFree86 dist., so I did

cp xf86site.def host.def

And did some changes to host.def.  I noticed that if I changed certain things
in host.def, the "make World" command would spew out some major errors.  Not
surprising, considering X332servonly is a subset of the full XF86 sources...
It was complaining about an oldX directory missing whenever I changed
something.


>
> >The shared/static libs build OK, but when it comes time to link all the
> >object files and libs together to produce the X-server, massive amounts of
> >errors about "undefined reference to ..." come pouring out like crazy.
> >This is in the subdir xc/programs/Xserver/hw...
> >
> >I tried building it w/out changing any source at first, just to see if it
> >would compile, and it won't compile.  So anyone successfully built the
> >XFree86 servers from source on 3.0-R?
>
> Patches are required for FreeBSD/ELF (FreeBSD wasn't ELF when 3.3.2 was
> released).  You should be able to use the patches in FreeBSD's XFree86
> port.  Just ignore any that might be for files not included in
> X332servonly.tgz
>
> Or you could wait for a week or so for XFree86 3.3.3 which will include
> support for FreeBSD/ELF out of the box.
>
> BTW, what chipset are you planning to add support for?
>

I was going to try to build a driver for SiS 5597/5598.  I heard that it might
included in the next release of XF86, but I just wanted to see if I could do
it on my own.  Actually, even though the SiS 5598 is unsupported, I found that
using the driver for a related SiS chipset, 86c205, almost works.

The only thing is that there's this strange fuzziness/flickering in certain
areas of the screen.  I thought that maybe it was because the VCO center freq.
was a little different than the sis 86c205.  I suspected only minor changes to
the drivers were needed to give me a "less flickery" screen.  Didn't  certain
ATI chipsets have this problem?

I was maybe also hoping to hack the X-server code and do a little tweaking and
get some accelerated functions to work.  Someone told me the reason that the
KDE window manager's problem not refreshing when windows are moved/resized was
do to a buggy X-server, and I hoped to correct this as well.

But if I did manage to make the X-server work better for my chipset, I would
definitely submit the patches to the XFree86 team.  I realize that most people
don't have the time to make the perfect X-server for every chipset, so I
figured I have a lot of free time, I can dedicate a lot of it to tweaking and
perfecting the X-server code.  (Not that I'm necessarily going to succeed, but
I'm definitely going to try).

Someone suggested I buy an X-server from Xi or just get a new video card.  But
I don't believe in paying companies that kind of money when the X source is
available.  With enough hacking on the freely available source, the sky's the
limit. :]

Thanks for getting back to me on this.


Donn






To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3646118E.FFF8013E>