> henning loeser wrote:
> > I get the simular results to what Justin wrote on my Quadra 700 with 8 
> > Bit Colordepth on the internal video. The palette seems to be off. But I 
> > can run all the colors I want to, trying some random RGB values my 
> > desktop looks quite ok by now.
> 
> It's the "trying random RGB values" part that I would consider broken.  It
> should "just work", but without pallete-switching, it won't.

Ok, let me clear this issue up.

The server Ken wrote will let you do color in 16 bit mode ("Thousands" under
MacOS). How does it do this? Simple: 16 bit mode is a "direct" color mode.
That is, you can't change the palette. It simply has a few thousand colors
and X plays within those thousands of colors. We've always had the capability
to do this, even without support for color hardware provided that you boot
NetBSD in 16 bit color mode.

When you try to use Ken's server under 8 bit mode the X server presumes that
it can change the color palette. Since 8 bit mode only has 256 colors, the
server relies on the fact that it can change the palette to allocate colors
as it needs. However, doing this *requires* that there be support for the
color hardware in the kernel. Right now, we only have support for some NuBus
cards when you use the SLOTMAN kernel or the color LKM. I'm working on
support for internal video on most machines and I'm hoping to make my
first release around the end of the month into the beginning of next month.
Until that time, you won't be able to use 8 bit mode in color. However, if
you boot in 8 bit mode using grays then you get 256 gray levels and that's
something the X server can understand. It's not color but it's something
better than 1 bit mode.

When my first release comes around you'll be able to switch depths and
resolutions on the fly. This makes Ken's server even more attractive since
you'll be able to boot in 1 bit mode for a speedy console and then switch
to 8 or 16 bit mode to run X. Once again, however, you'll need to wait
until I make my first intvid test kernel release for that to work.

> video (although I don't think that it will support all machines when it
> first comes out).

I should be able to support almost all of the desktop machines with color
on the first release. However, how much I can support on each machine
will vary a little. I've almost got full support on the Quadras and II's
compared with the AV's where I might only have palette support.