On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Richard Rauch wrote:

: >  > Out of curiosity, what features does one gain from the Sun emulation
: >  > option with wscons?  (I am ignorant of what a real Sun console is
: >  > like.)  If I'm using an i386 machine, would there be any benefits (or any
: >  > changes at all) if I had asked for WSEMUL_SUN in my kernel?
: > 
: > When the SPARC port uses it, there are obvious benefits :-)

: Is it just for machines with the right hardware, then?  Or does it tend to
: make SPARC natives happier?

The Sun terminal emulation is a branch off of the ANSI family (which
includes pc3, the VT100 descendants, and a bunch of others).  It's a little
bit optimized for bitmapped consoles (which Suns use), and usually performs
better than a `VT220' type of termcap in that case.  This emulation is
more-or-less identical to the terminal emulation used by the native Sun PROM
console, and very close to the base OpenFirmware console.

Which one you use is completely up to you.  On PC hardware, VT220 will give
you many more terminal capabilities without loss, since the PC displays are
character-cell based.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  http://www.wasabisystems.com/
-- Speed, stability, security, and support.  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.