Subject: Re: Xamiga PicassoII support
To: Anders \"ali\" Lindgren <ali@h543.sparta.lu.se>
From: Michael Teske <teske@mail.desy.de>
List: port-amiga
Date: 06/16/1998 20:50:05
On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Anders "ali" Lindgren wrote:

> I noticed -- somewhat surprised given the age and
> popularity of PicassoII boards -- that Xamiga
> only support 8bit displays on PicassoII(+). Since
> my P2+ can display up to 1024x768x16 and 24bit at least
> up to 800x600 it'd be neat to be able to use them. Is
> any work updating it going on?
> 
That is because of the reversed byte order in these modes (comes from
using a PC chip without special logic. The CV64 and PicassoIV for example
have such a logic). Since the "standard" X sources don't contain support
for these byte orderings and for 24 bit - only 32 bit is supported - one
would have to rewrite the whole cfb16 and cfb24 sources. 

There was an Xserver for Picasso in 16 bits, but when I integrated Picasso
source in the Xamiga server I looked into the source and found it being
unuseable, because it was not documented and because it was a patch to the
original sources and not a set of functions which would only be activated
for picasso screens. The retina Xserver did this right and could be
integrated easily, for example.

So I ended up with throwing the 16bit part away and left this task for one
who actually has a picassoII, but up to now, nobody did it (and probably
never will).

16 and 24 bit modes are deadly slow on a picassoII, anyway.

Greetings, Michael 

-- 
Michael Teske