Subject: Re: Vast, vast speed increases
To: Ray Phillips , tech-x11 <tech-x11@netbsd.org>
From: David Hopper <dhop@nwlink.com>
List: tech-x11
Date: 09/26/2002 09:31:18
Ray Phillips wrote:
> David:
> 
> I read your posting to the NetBSD/alpha mailing list
> 
>     http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-alpha/2002/09/24/0008.html
> 
> and thought I'd ask which video card you have in the Miata 600au you 
> referred to.

Matrox Millennium II (mga 2164w)

> Was the 4.1.0 XFree server you mentioned compiled from a standard 
> distribution from XFree86.org or did you have to make some 
> modifications?  The only successful method I've found of using a VGA 
> card successfully on an Alpha so far is to compile and install Mel 
> Kravitz's modified version of XFree86 4.0.2.

I'm not familiar with Mel's version.  I used Simon Burge's 4.0.2 patches 
against the 4.1.0 XFree code as it existed in the NetBSD source tree back 
with 1.5X in July/August 2001.  More information about the state of X on 
Alpha is at:

http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=17109

The problem seems to be that XFree soured on the Alpha between 4.1.0 and 
4.2.0, and 4.1.0 never made it to any releases-- it exists somewhere only 
in a snapshot.

Simon has since updated the patches referenced above:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-x11/2002/06/22/0000.html

...but he states that the new patches not work on the Alpha-- and I have 
not tried them.

> Did you compile your XFree 4.1.0 server last year using NetBSD 1.5.2 (or 
> thereabouts) or with a pre-release of 1.6?  I wonder if there would be 
> any advantage in using 1.6's newer compiler?

It was 1.5X, a -current snapshot.  XFree4 went from 4.0.3 to 4.1.0 to 4.2.0 
in between releases, so unfortunately that 4.1.0 codebase is lost to me.  I 
have a message out to the tech-x11 folks, though, in the hopes that someone 
kept this snapshot somewhere.  I've tried compiling 4.1.0 from XFree86.org, 
but it really wants to be nestled inside the NetBSD source tree, and I 
haven't gotten that far.

> What method did you use to acquire NetBSD versions 1.6D and 1.6H? 
> They're more recent than the official 1.6 release aren't they?

Information on tracking -current is available at
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/current/

I use sup.

> Ray

--Dave