From owner-freebsd-arch Sat Jan 25 3:59:16 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 317F437B401 for ; Sat, 25 Jan 2003 03:59:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (c18609.belrs1.nsw.optusnet.com.au [210.49.80.204]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59BF843F13 for ; Sat, 25 Jan 2003 03:55:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peterjeremy@optushome.com.au) Received: from cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (localhost.alcatel.com.au [127.0.0.1]) by cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h0PBtBLZ021938 for ; Sat, 25 Jan 2003 22:55:11 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from jeremyp@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au) Received: (from jeremyp@localhost) by cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id h0PBrp5o021926; Sat, 25 Jan 2003 22:53:51 +1100 (EST) Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 22:53:51 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy To: Rodolphe Ortalo Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: the mythical syscons redesign document ( was Re: Porting wscons ) Message-ID: <20030125115351.GA21347@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> References: <20030123234431.GB555@athlon.pn.xcllnt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 10:58:12PM +0100, Rodolphe Ortalo wrote: >I understand clearly why doing so may be important for serial consoles (or >possibly other non-display adapters), but wrt most (modern) VGA adapters, >I have the feeling that discarding the state and switching to some >advanced mode should be done as soon as possible! :-) I'd prefer to retain state if at all possible. It's very useful being able to look back through the kernel output - whilst working on the TGA driver, I found it quite annoying that the main TGA device probe would wipe all the state. (This is also something I find particularly irritating about sysinstall - the probe messages are all wiped by the sysinstall menu so you don't know if the hardware was found correctly). Personally, I don't see why it's at all important to switch out of text mode quickly. Kernel output messages are inherently text so switching to a graphics mode just makes more work for the kernel. I know Sun have had their logo in the boot screen for as long as I can recall - and it's getting fancier with time - but I fail to see that this is more than unnecessary frippery. > Note that this does not necessarily mean discarding VGA-style display >mode; but for example if the board allows to access all needed VGA >registers via a MMIO area (instead of the usual fixed adresses regs around >0x3C0) and its framebuffer (including the VGA part) via another area, Whilst I can't verify it, I believe Tru64 does something like this. It's quite obvious that the text font on a VGA card changes when the card is probed during the main device tree scan. Presumably the card is being switched to a graphics mode by the main device driver. >difficult to share) VGA adresses in a multiple-boards configuration are >cleared, and further initialisations of remaining boards can proceed more >cleanly. How common is this? And how important is it that both cards function during boot? I have two Matrox Millennium-II cards in one of my systems and I'm not at all fazed by one of them not being initialised until X starts. I suspect that very few people have more than one graphics adapter and even fewer want to be able to use both adapters outside X. Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message