Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 5 Feb 1999 22:01:50 -0800 (PST) | From | John Lenton <> | Subject | Re: mdacon options |
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Ok, so I should probably drop by bigbrownpaperbags.com and buy a gross. So I'm lousey at reading code. I always have been, unless I've written it myself. Specially in a programming language I'm not fully versed in yet [1].
The problem is that this mdacon thingy is extremely useful: I have it sitting there showing my syslog without my electricity bill going through the ceiling. Also I get to switch consoles without loosing scrollback, which is very nice thank you.
True, mdacon.c is probably one of the shortest pieces of the kernel, but could it be documented? Something very much like what's in Configure.help, but with the options in it. Or maybe they could go into Configure.help? It's not all that long.
If you have an old MDA or monochrome Hercules graphics adapter in your system acting as a second head ( = video card). You will then be able to use two monitors with your Linux system.
If you pass no options to this driver, it will take over virtual consoles number A through B [2]. However, this may be inconvenient, so it can optionally take a command line option in the shape of `mdacon=a,b' (here a is the first-virtual-console-to-be-taken-over-by-the-MDA-driver minus one, and b is the last one, again minus one. [3]
If you decide to compile it as a module, `modprobe mdacon' will again fall back onto the default behaviour, and in this case you can specify `modprobe mdacon mda_first_vc=a mda_last_vc=b' to get the the same effect as with the aforementioned command line.
If I had my way I'd change the 1st paragraph to
If you have an old MDA or monochrome Hercules graphics adapter and monitor to match scratting around your shelves, you can now plug the card into your Linux box and have a free dual-headed machine.
A note to whoever is maintaining this (Andrew Apted, is that still you?) is that I sometimes get my Hercules card recognized as a 8k card and sometimes as a 4k card. I haven't pinpointed when it does which, but I believe it has something to do with soft reboot vs. hard reboot. Meaning that if I've powered the machine straight into Linux I have an 8k board, but after rebooting (thats CTRL-ALT-DEL, and back into linux) I sometimes have a 4k board. Not that I can tell the difference from my (user) end. Well as usual my verbal diarrhea gets worse as the sun goes up. Cheers, John. [1] Should read: have yet to write a line of code that does what I want it to the nth time round. [2] I don't know what the defaults were, I've changed them too many times and haven't kept the original file anywhere. [3] Could we make it such that if I say mdacon=a,b it is actually a,b and not a-1,b-1? What for? Well, we could remove-all-the-hyphens-from-the-doc, then. As a side effect the interface would be a bit "saner". ****** I'm sorry about the awful format this is in, I'm using yahoo with lynx and it's terrible. I can't post from my pop account, see my other posting ****** --------------------------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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