>>>> Or, of course, you can drop the card into graphics mode and draw
>>>> whatever you please.  I'm not sure _that_ would be something I'd
>>>> advise putting into the kernel, though [...]
>> [...] SPARC consoles don't have a separate graphics and text mode.
>> Making the console bitmapped would probably not be such a big deal
>> if not for the fact that there appear to be an infinite number of PC
>> motherboard/BIOS/graphix adapter card combinations [...]
> I'd also be worried about the performance.  It only takes one
> operation to write a character into the text-mode screen - and an
> entire screen can be coppied with one memcpy of 4000 bytes.

I wouldn't be concerned about performance; there's no reason for it to
be any worse than using an xterm under X, or the console on a SPARC
with RASTERCONSOLE defined.

The major reason I would avoid putting it in the kernel is the bit
about handling each of the gazillion graphics cards.  (Though
admittedly some of this is already necessary to handle saving and
restoring hardware settings when flipping between virtual consoles
already.)

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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