Re: Using multiple monitors

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 08:15:19AM -0500, Michael wrote:
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> Hello,
> 
> On Jan 22, 2011, at 7:57 AM, Christopher Berardi wrote:
> 
> >I don't know if this is even possible, but -- could NetBSD be
> >setup to either
> >have a *console* session (using a program like window, screen, or
> >tmux) spread
> >over two or more monitors?
> >
> >Or, could it be setup to have a separate tty assigned to each
> >monitor (e.g.,
> >tty1 on monitor 1, tty2 on monitor 2, etc.) and then convienent
> >hotkeys be
> >assigned to 1) switch between ttys (like it currently uses
> >ctrl-alt-[1-9]) and
> >2) switch between active monitors (e.g., ctrl-alt-shift-[1-9])?
> 
> Sort of, but probably not on i386 thanks to firmware limitations.
> First, the vga driver only supports one instance but there are other
> drivers that have no such limit. The problem is that most of these
> drivers depend on the firmware to initialise the graphics chip and
> run with whatever graphics mode they find. On sparc for example the
> firmware will setup all connected graphics devices and NetBSD will
> support tty output on whatever it has drivers for. On other
> architectures it's hit and miss - OpenFirmware may or may not setup
> additional devices, if it does we can usually use them.

Michael,

Maybe I am misinformed, but I thought that it was possible in principle
for NetBSD to initialize a VGA adapter using the same BIOS video entry
point as the system BIOS uses during boot.  Then i386 could use every
available framebuffer regardless of whether or not the system BIOS
initialized it.  What do you think?

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933