Robert Black wrote:

> It *will* be done because I want a double-headed machine :-)
> 
> What hardware it will be running on is another issue entirely...

> > If and when we support RiscPC II (which is I guess where a lot of people
> > are coming from) the chances are it'll just be VIDC. On our own PCI
> > hardware, we may support one or two different kinds of card (most likely
> > Matrox Millenium II, as that's what I have in my PC, together with some
> > sort of S3) probably just running in full screen VGA 80x25 text mode (or
> > whatever it is) with pcvt, pccons or something like that. We've had Mark
> > meddling with a PC VGA BIOS emulator which, if it works, could make some
> > of these things easier, but it's all quite problematic.
> 
> Neil: presumably by 'we' you meant Causality Limited. This is one area where
> Causality Limited and RiscBSD are likely to go in different directions because
> of different design criteria. Which console you get will depend on what you ask
> for in your kernel configuration file.

> > I guess someone could move over the drivers from one of these cards to
> > the RiscPC II if they want to put the effort in, but we're unlikely to
> > spend much time with the machine---chances are Acorn will loan us one to
> > get a port going but we won't be buying one (well the company, myself
> > and Mark won't anyway :) ).
> 
> If I get the chance/time I will be doing this myself. Whether I buy a RiscPC II
> depends on its final spec. I am keeping an open mind for now.

The main thing here is I don't want people to expect they can plug in an
off-the-shelf whizz-bang bells an whistles PCI card. From *Causality's*
point of view, on our own PCI hardware, we will support, with XFree86
and probably pcvt, probably a certain S3 graphics card, maybe a high-end
card such as a Millenium II, and maybe a Cirrus board. That'll be it.

Again on our own hardware we will get XFree86 up, so that all of its
drivers can be used with the appropriate PCI graphics cards, *provided*
that the equivalent work of the BIOS on the PCI cards has been done. We
may have a BIOS emulator to do this on our board, though whether or not
this BIOS emulator will be ported to RiscPC 2 is again completely up in
the air, and to a fair extent depends on how many people buy it.

Mark's spent ages faffing around just trying to get _one_ video card to
work properly, and it really shouldn't be underestimated just how
colossal a job this is, given the complete absence of documentation and
a PC BIOS.

Note that running a bitmap console over PCI is absolutely *not*
efficient, unless a fair amount of effort is put into providing support
for some kind of hardware accelerated character plotting via the cards.
OK if this isn't done, it means sticking with an 80x25 text console, but
at least that ensures most compatibility with XFree86.

	Neil 

-- 
Neil A. Carson   Business development, Causality and Chalice Technology
Causality:       WWW: http://www.causality.com email: neil@causality.com
Chalice Tech:    WWW: http://www.chaltech.com  email: neil@chaltech.com
Office contact:  Tel/Fax: +44 (0)181 930 7408  Mobile: +44 (0)370 593183
SA110+1100, 21285/PCI, ARM, 3D, RTOSs, NetBSD, Image Processing, NC OSs