Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 23 Oct 1998 09:32:27 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      Nick Hibma <nick.hibma@jrc.it>
To:        FreeBSD hackers mailing list <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: multi-user: multiple consoles in FreeBSD 
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.3.95q.981023093009.18824e-100000@elect8>
In-Reply-To: <199810230127.SAA02423@dingo.cdrom.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

Guys,

Would it be possible to remove non appropriate individuals from the
reply-to lines? I do read the hackers list. And this morning I was
swamped with duplicates.

Greg, if you could give me/the list (probably more than me alone who
might have a spare monitor somewhere to play with) a hint on which cards
you have been able to do this with, I could appreciate a hint. The same
brand is needed for all the cards or does that not matter?

Nick




On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Mike Smith wrote:

 > > > Jason's gripe was that you con't have more than one video card because
 > > > the second wants its VGA-compatibility registers mapped in the same
 > > > place as the first.
 > > 
 > > Right, but there are ways to disable it.
 > 
 > Yes, although they're not in our hands.
 > 
 > > > Unless there's something really odd going on, it's relatively
 > > > trivial to simply map the I/O ranges for display cards other than
 > > > the first somewhere else; you just need the smarts in your system to
 > > > do this.
 > > >
 > > > Video chipsets not supporting this would be in violation of the PCI
 > > > spec.  I wouldn't expect this to be too common.
 > > 
 > > Hmmm.  How would you go about doing it?  It would have to be in the
 > > BIOS setup, and I can't see anything there that allows it.  I suppose
 > > you could start up with one video BIOS disabled, and then enable it
 > > programmatically during the boot.
 > 
 > There are several components which need to play "nice" for it to work.
 > 
 > The system BIOS has to do the "right thing" when it's setting the 
 > PCI interfaces on the cards up; it needs to deal with the case where 
 > it's got more than one device that says it's a VGA adapter, and only 
 > map one of them in.  If it's stupid it may crash or map them both 
 > (which would probably hang the bus).
 > 
 > Then the BIOS on the card that doesn't have the compatibility mappings 
 > has to realise the fact.  If it doesn't, it will try to talk to the 
 > registers as though they were for it, which would be bad.  It might be 
 > less bad if all the cards were identical.
 > 
 > Since Jason claims to have tested this and failed, while I know that you
 > have at least one well-behaved card, it seems to be a bit of a mixed
 > bag.  I wonder if the current crop of ATI cards still work?  I've got a 
 > pair of Rage 3DII's here I could try it with.
 > 
 > 
 > -- 
 > \\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
 > \\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
 > \\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
 > \\  end it's only with yourself.  \\  msmith@cdrom.com
 > 
 > 
 > 

-- 
STA-ISIS, T.P.270, Joint Research Centre, 21020 Ispra, Italy


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.GSO.3.95q.981023093009.18824e-100000>