Subject: Re: XFree86 vs X.org on sparc64
To: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
From: Michael Lorenz <macallan@netbsd.org>
List: tech-x11
Date: 12/15/2005 06:56:38
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Hello,

> We should look at was OpenBSD does too (as they use X.org).

Yes, with wsfb being the only driver on sparc and sparc64 - that would
be quite a step down from what we have right now - we use a modified
wsfb ( hardware cursor support added ) only for Krups, and even there
only because nobody found a way to access the blitter. All the
(supported) rest has acceleration.
We'll have to port all the SBus code over ( shouldn't be hard, I'm
looking at it ) and maybe decide about using sun-style framebuffer
devices to access PCI boards too, which would let us run multihead
without funky hacks. I'm not sure my approach is the cleanes possible
but at least it's a start.
Besides that it would resolve the conflict between PCI resources and the
framebuffer mapping at offset 0 via ttyE* - some Sun/ATI firmware likes
to put a register block at 0x2000 - an fb device wouldn't have this
problem. ( on most 32bit architectures that would be a non-issue but on
sparc64 you can actually access the whole 4GB without overlapping
anything physical, and who's going to blame them for using the
address-space available? )

> It would be good if a NetBSD "X" developer joined or participated in
> the  xorg freedesktop list(s). (Maybe there is but I have not noticed
> over  past 18 months.)

I guess the usual suspects either did or will subscribe after reading
uwe's mail.

have fun
Michael

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