Subject: Re: drawing a blank
To: Kevin Wooten <kevinw@quik.com>
From: Matthias Drochner <drochner@zel459.zel.kfa-juelich.de>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/12/1999 20:52:06
kevinw@quik.com said:
> Question 1:  does wscons have some sort of screen-blanking mechanism
> to use [ie. scon for pcvt].

No, there is nothing. I personally find screen savers rather
disturbing. If I want the screen to go off, I press the
power button. (And laptops -where some power saving might be
justified- do it under BIOS control.)

> I tried scon, but continuing getting an ioctl
> error, so I'm assuming scon it just incompatible with wscons.

That's right. scon is specifically written for pcvt, and
compatibility was only implemented in wscons as far as necessary
for X servers.

> Two: for how long will pccons/pcvt console drivers continue to be
> supported or "packaged" with NetBSD? 

There are no plans I know of to remove these drivers from the
distribution. (pccons is still used as a ressource-saving driver
for installation btw.)
There are no plans otoh to update them for current hardware.
Eg. pcvt's 132-column feature is quite useless now since modern
graphics cards are rarely supported. And both will probably never
support USB keyboards.

As for the screensaver: If someone writes and contributes some
wscons extension, it might well be integrated...

best regards
Matthias