Subject: Re: Where to find Xarm-34 (was Re: Cryptozilla vailable)
To: Markus Baeurle <emw4maba@gp.fht-esslingen.de>
From: Robert Black <r.black@ic.ac.uk>
List: port-arm32
Date: 05/21/1998 14:39:41
Markus Baeurle wrote:
> 
> In message <Marcel-1.41-0518095643-0b0LJLo@various-artists.demon.co.uk>
>           Joe Oldak <joe@various-artists.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > > Xarm-34-vide1124
> >
> > My my! When might we see such a beast? The poor performance (and
> > stability) of Xarm-33 is annoying me a little...
> 
> Rob Black made this available for people to test some time ago with a test
> kernel with the new console code.
> The ftp server is ftp://monet.me.ic.ac.uk/pub/vide

Yep.

> I never found Xarm-33 unstable though but then I haven't used it for quite some
> time.
> Xarm-34 is quite stable for me, though occasionally it crashes with a "Memory
> fault".

Xarm-33 is quite unstable on low memory machines. I haven't figured out
why yet.

> Rob, I never managed to check out the console code though, but never got round
> to tell you, so I'm using this convenient opportunity. ;-)

Right. I suspect Mark is waiting for me to give him a 'near complete'
version before he checks it in. I'll give him some updated sources RSN
(and possibly upload them on the ftp site if he doesn't feel they're
advanced enough to go in the NetBSD tree proper).

> The problem is that the test kernels you made available switch to a different
> screenmode shortly after booting, and my monitor can't sync it. It seems I'm
> dropped right into a shell where I can type "halt" to get back to RISC OS.

Hmm, there is a way of getting the bootloader to pass through a complete
monitor definition from RiscOS. The relevant variable is vidc.mode and
it is just a comma separated list of numbers (no spaces). Unfortunately
I think I am using a special bootloader. Mark can probably tell you how
to get the normal bootloader to do it. vidc.bpp is set to the number of
bits per pixel you wish to use (the default is probably 8 but I can't
remember).

If you're dropped into a shell then the chances are this is single user
mode. This probably means you've forgotten to mknod the tty devices, etc
(read all the README files for the different versions...).

Cheers

Rob