On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, darknesssss wrote:

> First, when I boot up, my system says grf0 is a minimal console.  What exactly
> does this mean?  I have noticed that I cant get ANSI color characters, or ansi
> characters in general.  Is this part of the problem?

What problem?
I've reread this several times, and I don't think you mentioned a problem
anywhere.

I'm not sure what ``minimal console'' means.  I advise you to ignore it.
Is there something you want to do and can't, that you think traces back to
the console's minimalness?  Where are you getting stuck in the process of
satisfying your wishes?

> Has anyone compiled and used Amaya Browser for the mac68k?

1. I haven't used it.  I would like to try it.  I'm interested in an
answer to this, too.

2. To use Amaya, you need to install the X Window System.  This exercise
is probably more fun on the mac68k than on any other platform.  The mac68k
X environment has been half-finished for a few years now.  Check out the
color X FAQ's on the web for all the practical details.

The short story is you can get a 1-bpp (black&white) X environment running
by doing little besides installing the right sets and typing 'startx'.  
If you want greyscale or color, you must jump through some or all of the
following hoops-of-fire:

 o download a special binary-only X server that you cannot rebuild
   yourself from xsrc because it's not ``finished'' and therefore no one
   else is allowed to see the code

 o patch your kernel with the excellent ``SLOTMAN'' diffs which have
   been highly stable, highly useful, and highly ``experimental'' for
   several years now--they still haven't been checked into CVS and
   included in the main kernel distributions, in spite of the fact that
   the color X servers work very poorly without them (of course, the color
   X servers aren't checked into CVS either, so maybe it all makes sense)

 o Depending on whether you use SLOTMAN or not and whether you have
   Internal video or NuBus video, you may need to tell your color X 
   server in what video mode you've booted by passing it a command-line 
   option or setting an environment variable.  There are no official docs
   for the X server, or for the syntax of this command line option, and
   the source code isn't available so you can't UTSL.  But the syntax of
   the option is documented in a FAQ somewhere on the web page, and is
   supposed to be correct even though the FAQ and the Color X server are
   written by different people.

   I'm usually good at this sort of thing, but the variable didn't seem to
   me like it was doing anything.  I think it was probably because I had
   an unsupported card, the 8*24 GC.  But, well, clearly I don't
   understand something because I thought the point of the mystery
   variable was that there were no such thing as unsupported cards any
   more.

 o If you use internal video or if you don't use SLOTMAN, your X server
   won't be able to change colormaps.  This means you omust use 8-bit
   greyscale or 16-bit trucolor. 8-bit pseudocolor will not be available
   in this case.  This corresponds to ``Greyscale'' or ``Thousands of 
   Colors'' in MacOS Monitors control panel, which is where you make the
   actual setting.

 o 24-bit truecolor doesn't work yet.

 o some 3-button mice work, while some do not.  they start and stop
   working between revisions on a regular basis, because obscure timing
   characteristics of the HW_DIRECT adb driver can interfere with
   mouse-type detection.  Some 3-button mice work as one-button mice, 
   or so I'm told.  My Glidepoint worked as a 3-button mouse in one
   revision, and went completely apeshit in another revision (acted like
   a PeeCee mouse set for the wrong ``protocol'').

Some people have an easy time getting Color X to work, while others do
not. If it's not obvious, I was one of the ones who didn't.  Maybe you
should just promise yourself to spend exactly X hours on Color X, and see
what you come up with--that's what i'd do if I were you.  Have low
expectations, and enjoy yourself.

If Color X won't work, you can aways use 1-bpp black&white X instead.  As
I said, you just download the X sets and type 'startx', no need to go
through the list of crazy nonsense above.  It's probably a good idea to
keep a Genuine Apple Mouse around, though, in case you upgrade to the
latest release and your mouse whacks out. Amaya will run on this 1-bpp
defualt X server--just pictures won't look very good, that's all.

3. mac68k's are generally considered too slow to run a modern browser.  I
personally find this absolutely rediculous.  I think it has everything to
do with browsers sucking and nothing to do with the amount of CPU actually
required to browse the web.  Maybe Amaya is sanely written and efficient.
I hope so.

4. Most people around here use lynx, w3m, or links.  These are text-mode
browsers, listed in order of decreasing stability and increasing rendering
quality.  links does an amazing job of ``gracefully'' rendering
table-laden messy web pages onto a character-cell terminal.  All these
browsers are in pkgsrc and thus easy to build/install, while Amaya is not.

Even if you decide to use links or similar, you should get X working.  The
grf console is not meant to be something you sit in front of and use to do
actual work.  You're supposed to either telnet to the box, or use dt, or
use X.  grf is just for booting and printing console error messages on
unattended boxes.

-- 
Miles Nordin / v:+1 720 841-8308 fax:+1 530 579-8680
555 Bryant Street PMB 182 / Palo Alto, CA 94301-1700 / US