From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 18 08:43:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA14033 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:43:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA14025 for ; Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:43:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id JAA11183; Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:40:05 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199702181640.JAA11183@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: pcvt/132 columns To: dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au (David Dawes) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:40:05 -0700 (MST) Cc: ccsanady@nyx.pr.mcs.net, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199702180900.UAA22646@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au> from "David Dawes" at Feb 18, 97 08:00:02 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > A large proportion of the hw-specific code is required precisely for > initialising the state of the graphics card. From our (XFree86's) > experience, this is the hard part. The rest is relatively easy. [ ... ] > >>Have a look at /usr/src/usr.sbin/pcvt/set2061/, just to get the > >>feeling for _one_ (now already fairly aged) piece of hardware that > >>needs to be supported, the ICD2061A clock synthesizer. > > And the exact details of programming a chip like this depends on the > card it is on. The version in pcvt/set2061 only deals with S3 cards. And initialization code can be thrown away after use, so there is no reason not not mark the segment as "init, discardable", or if you need to use the code again "preload, pageable". In point of fact, if the code gets into a signle object module segment, there is no reason that it can't be used to replace the object module segment for the default video driver it is replacing, in the kernel image itself. This would provide an easy way of "building" a "new" kernel, without needing to actaully relink anything at all. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.