On Sun, 6 Jul 1997 15:56:14 +1000 (EST),
David Conran <lucifer@maths.uq.oz.au> writes:

Gregory McGarry writes ...

>> Yes, I know they are not supported by X11Rx.  Does this possibly mean
>> that they don't work as a console either under NetBSD?  Can I remove the
>> card possibly?
>Yes .. or set the serial port to be the console (discussed in other emails)


If I could figure out a good way to distinguish a present but
unsupported framebuffer from no framebuffer at all, it *might* be
possible to use PROM code for console output on PMAG-J and PMAG-C/E/F
framebuffers.  The blitting is likety to be horribly slow, though.

>or ... I can loan/give you a 17" greyscale monitor for the "internal" PMAG-DV
>(I think it is called). Which I am fairly certain is supported.

Yes, it's supported. But the PMAG-DV monitors are a standard VGA rate;
at least they tend to disappear onto PCS. So you could try an SVGA
monitor and see if it works.

>> Are you running NetBSD of these, or persisting with Ultrix?

>Because I like Colour 1280x1024x24bpp instead of GreyScale 1024x768x8bpp
>I have to stick with Ultrix .. I was almost thinking of donating one of the
>cards to someone *if* they would/could port the xserver to it :)

It's not that simple (as I said in a private e-mail to David Conran).
First, you *need* a device-driver for the PMAG-J in the kernel, to
handle mmap()ing the framebuffer into user-space.  THe device-driver
will almost certainly need a vertica-retrace interrupt handler, with
code to handle things like cursor repositioning during the
vertical-retrace blank.  Finally, you'd probably want framebuffer
console support, unless you're happy with using a serial consoel to
boot and *only* X11 on the framebuffer.

And, finally, if there's *any* kind of accellerator on the PMAG-J, it
may well be simpler to just make the DEC Xtx server work under Ultrix
compatibility than to find out how the accelerator works and add
kernel and Xserver support for it.

That said ... send me one, and we'll see what happens.  I already have
most of the glue to run the Ultrx Xws servers on a PMAG-A, PMAG-BA, or
PMAGB-BA done.