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Date:      Tue, 4 Jun 1996 17:47:51 -0700 (MST)
From:      Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
To:        james@miller.cs.uwm.edu (Jim Lowe)
Cc:        terry@lambert.org, FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.org, fcurrent@jraynard.demon.co.uk, grog@lemis.de
Subject:   Re: Vm fixes NG
Message-ID:  <199606050047.RAA27881@phaeton.artisoft.com>
In-Reply-To: <199606041921.OAA16941@miller.cs.uwm.edu> from "Jim Lowe" at Jun 4, 96 02:21:22 pm

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> > > Syscons seems to be able to do this just fine via <cntl><alt><fx>.  It
> > > would sure be nice to be able to drop into the debugger when running X
> > > w/o having to switch to another virtual console first.
> > 
> > The only fix would be for *all* graphic modes to be settable *only*
> > through the console driver, so that the console driver can unset
> > them without having to ask a user space program to do it for it.
> 
> I didn't realize that the X server was the one actually doing this.
> I don't think it is necessary for *all* graphics modes to be settable
> *only* through the console driver.  Dropping the X server into the
> kernel seems like a big waste of space -- but I guess it is an option :-).

Which is why you would only drop the DDX into the kernel, not the
whole server, and dynamically load per-card DDX implementations other
than generig VGA on an as-needed basis.

> It should be possible to download two code segments to syscons when X
> starts up for each particular card (or X-server).  This code sequence would
> be ``put me into default mode'' and ``put me into graphics mode''.

Sorry, but there are gate-enable/gate-disable sequences that must be
executed in order, especially for the Mach 32/64 cards.  It won't work
without putting more code for an interpreter than it would take to
put the generic VGA DDX code down there.

> Of course, the X server would have to update the ``put me into graphics mode''
> when you used <ctl><alt><+,->, but that wouldn't be a big deal.  In any case,
> it is certainly do able without teaching syscons everything that X
> knows.  All syscons really needs to know is how to switch modes back and
> forth.

And all the DDX code needs to do is provide a fame-buffer style
interface with certain drawing primitives abstracted for use by X, MGR,
DOS emulation, Mac emulation, VGA lib, etc., etc..


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.



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