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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 19:21:08 +1100
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199511150821.TAA25998@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: darrylo@hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org,
        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.0.5R hanging inexplicably...
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

>> > The ET4000 (and particularly the W32 variants) XFree server is _very_fragil
>> e_.
>> > 
>> > The cards themselves are no great shakes, and the behaviour of the server
>> > leads me to _strongly_ discourage people from using them. (Especially given
>> > how cheap S3-based cards are these days).
>> 
>> The et4000/w32p server has been rock solid under Linux for over a year...
>> just a data point...

>     It would be interesting to see if the people who are having
>problems with ET4000/W32p-based video cards are using syscons or pcvt.
>There have been a few posts recently regarding the "better robustness"
>of pcvt (vs syscons), and I just recently found a "bug" in syscons that
>was causing all my syscons fonts to be corrupted (after using
>X-Windows).

Don't blame syscons or pcvt for bugs in the X server.  The W32 server
apparently does incomplete initialization so it sometimes fails to switch
out of modes that are adequate for syscons and pcvt.  I've reported the
following problems for a W32i:

XF3.1.2: W32 server always crashes when starting up time trying to
         access through a null pointer to the accelerator registers.
XF3.1.1: W32 always hangs waiting for bit 1 in the Accelerator Status
         Register when switching back to X from syscons console.
         It sometimes hangs in the same place when starting up.

Bruce