Re: Amiga screen modes in wscons

[Carlos Milán Figueredo <cmilanf%hispamsx.org@localhost>]

Hi David,

From: David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2023 12:52

> If you have a fast cross build box the time to rebuild a new kernel
> with adjusted values is approximately nothing (though the time to copy
> to the Amiga and for it to reboot into it is very much not :)

I have the cross build box. Indeed it takes more time to scp the kernel to the Amiga and reboot than the compilation itself :) If for wrong parameters I cannot see the screen and I have to hard-reset the Amiga, the fsck will take easily 15 minutes. I could go around that by blindly writing or serial console...

> Looking for a more general solution - the values could be optionally
> passed in at boot time from the bootloader, either as parameters or by
> reading from a boot.cfg file

Not sure if that would be worth as they are really low-level, mostly for debugging. I think what would make sense is to give the user the option to select the screen mode as parameter from bootloader. I can see there are several screenmodes defined in grfabs_cc.c: GRF_PAL, GRF_NTSC, GRF_AGA, GRF_AGA_VGAONLY, GRF_SUPER72, GRF_A2024...

I think the -A kernel parameter -though nice- is not fine-grained enough.

> Actually - are these values which would make sense to be able to
> adjust dynamically at runtime - so via sysctl or ioctl the screenmode
> could be tweaked while running?

In that case, yes, low-level welcome! It would really help to adjust screen issues such as the one I am experiencing.

Regards,
Carlos

Carlos Milán Figueredo | HispaMSX System Operator | http://www.hispamsx.org | telnet://bbs.hispamsx.org | https://calnus.com