Hello David!

  DB> Yes - you can also have virtual terminals completely
    > in userland - using the misc/screen package from
    > pkgsrc.

Interesting!

  DB> That seems reasonable.

Hey, it's not often I get acused of being reasonable!

  DB> wscons(4) is a good place to start for a (somewhat
    > sketchy) overview.

Thanks, I'll try to look that up!

  DB> It would be perfectly feasible to adapt wscons to
    > allow virtual terminals on MDA as well as VGA hardware
    > - IIRC you do not need any extra memory on the card -
    > the contents of the extra terminals are stored in
    > kernel memory and copied across when the active
    > console is switched.

Ooh!  I had figured it was done using the "display pages"
introduced (so far as I am aware) with CGA.  Switching
between virtual consoles would just mean switching display
page rather than copying memory back and forth, presumably
it would be quicker - but of course it would limit virtual
consoles to PC display cards and perhaps serial terminals
that happened to support something along the lines of
"display pages".

  DB> If you have the card, start on the code :)

Well, if virtual consoles have been implemented in a way
that is hardware independent (working on serial terminals,
MDA, VGA and so on) then it would be redundant.  Interesting
stuff though!

Thanks for replying!

Regards,
  -
Andy.

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