lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1998]   [Apr]   [5]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: GGI and cli/sti in X
On Sun, Mar 29, 1998 at 08:08:56PM +0200, Harald Koenig wrote:

> > It'd need to communicate with the X server all the time about most of things
> > the X server does to precisely know about what state the display after the
> > server itself crashes is. For many cards it is not possible to just change
> > a videomode when you don't know what state (not just videomode) the card
> > is in.
> which graphics chips do have such strange state problems (and why) /
> at least not S3 chips (but those have plenty of other nice `features';)

Well, my old S3 with IBM ramdac and ICS clockchip behaved exactly like this.
Once it was in a crashed state nothing would geti it out of it completely.
But, maybe this was just imperfection of the software.

As to the word `many' I used, I believed others in this discussion. I don't
have experience with more than say ten different cards of which two or three
did show this behavior.

> > Which was never fixed for cards it can't be fixed on (Eg. Any S3 card with
> > older ICS clockchip, which are write-only, and thus the textmode can't be
> > saved to be restored.).
>
> using 25/28 MHz text modes (e.g. 80x25, 80x28) should be no problems
> even with these clock chips (as those freuqencies are fixed for
> VGA clock #0 and #1).

True. But, what do you think about 80x25 (or 80x60) on a 21" display? Funny,
isn't it?

> if you're using other pixel clocks for text mode and you can't read
> clock chip hardware, you have to specify that value in some way.
> this again doesn't depend on user or kernel mode!
> or how to you read out write-only registers with GGI in kernel mode ?!

If it were in the kernel, there'd be .one. driver that'd program the card.
Thus there won't be any need to read the registers, as it would know
what's in them.

> you may add it in the X config file (or a whole mode line for text mode)
> or whatever. it's really not a big patch if anyone really cares about.
> I myself don't have such a card and I don't care (80x25 is fine, you should
> use X anyway;) so I didn't write support.

Yes, but with this you'd need to specify (and have support for setting) the
text mode in every graphic mode program you use.

> you're complaining about this, so you seem to care. why not writing a
> small patch for X and send it to XFree86 or finding someone who cares too
> and can/will add this support.

Well, I don't use the old S3 anymore. Right now I've got a Mach64 GT, which is
supported by X only, (though there is a driver for it in the Linux kernel -
see the powerpc port), and thus I don't have this problem anymore.

No dosemu, no svgalib, no svgatextmode - no problems. *sigh*

I'll consider writing better textmode switching support for X, though.
Maybe an option that'd tell X to execute some program on consoleswitch
would work ....

> hey, did you realize that XFree86 is _free_ software where _you_ can
> add features which you'd like to have and which you think are important ?!
> sometimes I really wonder why all those advocates talk about free sources,
> licencing stuff and sources available is that important and when they
> could/should use this freedom they don't.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to write all the features I would count
useful. At the moment I am writing something else. ;)

Vojtech Pavlik

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:42    [W:0.174 / U:0.208 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site