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Date:      Tue, 18 Feb 1997 21:42:41 +0100
From:      pb@fasterix.freenix.fr (Pierre Beyssac)
To:        jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby)
Cc:        ccsanady@nyx.pr.mcs.net, jdc@xinside.com, FreeBSD-hackers@freebsd.org, FreeBSD-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: pcvt/132 columns
Message-ID:  <19970218214241.GQ48138@@>
In-Reply-To: <199702180500.VAA00752@lightside.com>; from Jake Hamby on Feb 17, 1997 21:00:50 -0800
References:  <199702180500.VAA00752@lightside.com>

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Jake Hamby writes:
> > Thanks for the suggestions though.  It would certainly make our lives
> > simpler if everyone was happy with plain framebuffer performance!
> 
> Having seen the Sun console frame buffer on the older SPARCstations (like 
> the SPARCstation 2), I am absolutely positive you don't want that on the PC!

I tend to agree... However it could be much faster on the PC than
it is on the Sun (since we don't have to use FORTH to handle it).

But it's not worth the trouble, IMHO. The extended width VGA text
modes are enough.

> The problem with the Sun console, that Jeremy didn't mention, is that the 
> frame buffer doesn't actually have a built-in text mode, like VGA cards do.  

Actually, I've recently been told that the Sun framebuffer _has_
a much faster built-in text mode and it is used by Linux/SPARC.
I haven't seen it myself (I'm not sure if it's a real text mode,
maybe they just reimplemented bitmap characters in C).
-- 
Pierre Beyssac	    pb@fasterix.frmug.fr.net pb@fasterix.freenix.fr
{Free,Net,Open}BSD, Linux : il y a moins bien, mais c'est plus cher
    Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org



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