On Sun, 18 Oct 1998 20:25:37 -0500 
 Ted Spradley <tsprad@spradley.tmi.net> wrote:

<rant>

 > Great!  How soon can you have it ready?

That's not a terribly productive attitude, unfortunately.

 > You see, I have a ZLXp-E2 languishing in a cardboard box in a closet 
 > because my AlphaStation panics on boot if I install it.  I don't much 
 > care about how well it works in character mode, I want to use it for an 
 > Xserver.  I have a patch from the Linux camp that purports to do that, 
 > but I can't try it if NetBSD won't run with the board installed.

NetBSD doesn't panic anymore.  I fixed that.  It took all of an hour
to write the necessary code, given the BT-463 manual.

And, if wscons doesn't work on the card, then X won't either.

You see, the Linux X server doesn't work under NetBSD.  NetBSD uses
completely different methods to access the frame buffer.  This issue
has been discussed for a long time.  Check the archives.

Of course, no one has stepped up to do the work.  Most notably, those
who want it the most (judging by how vocal they are) haven't put forth
any effort into making it happen.  Since NetBSD is a user-supported system
(i.e. those who use the system and want something added are basically
expected to add it and contribute back the changes), well, you can probably
see where I'm going with this.

Sure, I could work on it.  But:

	(a) I don't have one of these devices (that works anyhow), so it's
	    not getting in my way that I don't have support for it.

	(b) I have other things to hack on that are either more interesting
	    or more important to me.

	(c) No one is paying me obscene consulting rates to care about it.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in that boat.

I think you'll find that the situation will improve at a much faster rate
if you put forth some effort into fixing it.

</rant>

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                            Home: +1 408 866 1912
NAS: M/S 258-5                                       Work: +1 650 604 0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                             Pager: +1 650 940 5942