Subject: IIvx problems
To: None <macbsd-general@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ben Cottrell <benco@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>
List: macbsd-general
Date: 08/10/1995 19:14:35
First of all, I'd like to thank Allen profoundly for all the new IIvx
kernels :-) It's such a change from using an old vt100 with a dim, ugly
font and a flaky power supply to using my nice NEC monitor that conforms to
the Swedish radiation standards with the nice built-in console font and my
nice Mac keyboard.

If you ever have a shortage of kids, Allen, my firstborn is up for grabs :-)

A few observations/problems (I'm using the Aug 1 netbsd.iivx kernel from puma,
and I have 512K VRAM):
        * grf0 and grf1 don't work--they don't show up in dmesg. I've tried
          netbsd.bob, but that refuses to come up multi-user (just hangs after
          "checking disk quotas") If I use netbsd.bob in single-user and run,
          for example, dt, I don't get any black-and-white text, but instead
          a pattern of colored dots at the top of the screen.
        * Console vt emulation is, shall we say, less than perfect :-) Would
          that be fixed if I used dt? I haven't gotten dt working yet because
          of the grf problem.
        * Displaying text on the console--especially scrolling--seems to take
          ungodly amounts of processor time, sometimes even stopping serial
          I/O for a second. Under MacOS I have my monitor in 1-bit mode, so
          it's not like it's having to blit 8 bits per pixel around. Is this
          inevitable, or is there some way around it?
        * My monitor is set at 640x480 from the MacOS "Monitors" cdev. However,
          it's a multisync monitor and can go as high as 1024x768. By my
          calculations, even though 1024x768 at 8 bits per pixel wouldn't fit
          in my 512K of VRAM, 1024x768 at 1 bit per pixel would. Is there a
          way to do this, even though the MacOS won't let me?

Thanks a lot!
        -Ben