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From: David Dawes <dawes@physics.su.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199501071125.AA01368@physics.su.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: guest account: Yggdrasil information
To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 1995 22:25:57 +1100 (EST)
Cc: dawes@physics.su.oz.au, cg@FIMP01.fim.uni-linz.ac.at, hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <25754.789473998@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 7, 95 02:19:58 am
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>> It should be possible to get the 16-colour or mono server (our 16
>> colour server is quite slow so the mono server is probably a better
>> option) running on any VGA-compatible card at the standard 640x480 VGA
>> resolution using the provided sample XF86Config file.  The only bit that
>> needs configuring to do this is the mouse protocol/device setting.  That's
>> the mode MS Windows will run in until you install a card-specific driver.
>> To do anything much more adventurous is in my opinion doomed to failure.
>
>Actually, if you did the interface right, you wouldn't even need a
>mouse!  Just grab the server by the throat and demand all keystrokes.
>Do your own keystroke-based windows navigation even.  Write a window
>manager-cum-GUI interface.  But are you *really* sure you could get
>that VGA screen up there 99 times out of 100?  Let's say, as reliably
>as SCO's seems to come up in VGA mode on totally weird and whacked out
>hardware?  I don't like SCO, but it definitely runs on a lotta shit!
>
>[and I suppose you could read that last sentence in various ways :-)]

:-)

I think the SCO server can use the BIOS to initialise video modes, so
that would improve its success rate.  It'd be nice if we could do the same.

I did say "VGA compatible".  The generic driver in those Xservers
shouldn't assume anything other than "standard VGA" (which I guess
means register compatible with IBM's original VGA).  I think the only
problems I've heard of are with some P9000 based cards (probably using
Weitek's W5x86 SVGA chip), but I'll see if I can follow that up.

David