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Date:      Mon, 23 Mar 1998 21:32:46 -0800
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@cain.gsoft.com.au>
Cc:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@gsoft.com.au>, Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl>, =?ISO-8859-2?Q?S=F8ren_Schmidt?= <sos@FreeBSD.ORG>, Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: BIOS calls 
Message-ID:  <199803240532.VAA15384@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Mar 1998 15:44:03 %2B1030." <199803240514.PAA10765@cain.gsoft.com.au> 

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> > Just bolt it into syscons instead of the current mode changing.  Much 
> > more orthogonal.  But one thing at a time - this code needs testing and 
> > cleaning.  Start there.
> Hmm.. wouldn't this end up kind of fat? If you make it a seperate LKM, then 
> you can recompile it with different code for different cards.. Of course you 
> could make syscons an LKM, and do the same thing, but I've never tried to get 
> _that_ working...

Uh, the whole point is that you use the VESA BIOS, so there's nothing 
to "get fat".  It's all on the card already.

> > > Gee.. Lets just port the GGI API.. They are working on an X server which us
> > > GGI.. Mmm, no more unreadable kernel messages when your X server crashes..
> > *Yawn* The GGI stuff hasn't exactly impressed anyone with the speed 
> > with which it (hasn't) improved recently.  I can't see it congealing 
> > into anything really useful before GLiDE completely obsoletes it.  8)
> Hmm.. well I can't say I ever looked at its speed :)
> But it did have several advantages in my mind in that it was in the kernel so 
> it fixes the annoying "Oh dear my X server just died" problems (mostly), and 

That's what calling the VESA BIOS gets us.  Without having to have a 
single line of hardware-specific code in the kernel, we can call the 
card's BIOS which knows all about the hardware.

(This is all, of course, modulo BIOS bugs.  Hah.)

-- 
\\  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



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