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SubjectRe: mdacon options
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 ******
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