Subject: Got X working in color, yay...plus some more questions.
To: None <port-mac68k@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Dinsdale Piranha <dinsdale@vegas.infi.net>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 12/01/1996 23:41:20
Dug up an old "Apple Macintosh Display Card" that I'd had lying around for
years (it's only an 8-bit card; the predecessor to my "Apple Macintosh
Display Card 8 * 24", which was freezing my machine whenever I attempted to
make use color under MacBSD) and popped it in.  Whaddya know, everything
works perfectly (well, almost perfectly...but at least the problems I have
*now* aren't related to the colorkit :).  It was that damn 24-bit card
after all.  I should've caught on sooner...

...so, now that I'm not only in color but actually using an X server that's
recent enough not to crash at random, I have a couple of new questions.

1).  I *STILL* can't exit X smoothly.  Everything is default/fresh as it
was when I installed, except I edited xinitrc a little bit to position my
xterms and xclock the way I like it on startup (but that shouldn't affect
anything), and replaced the original X server with the latest color one.
Anyway, getting back to my point, when I select "Exit" from twm's popup
menu, it just quits twm only, leaving a bunch of borderless xterms (and an
xclock, natch) floating in space.  I can still type in them and stuff, and
switch between them, but I can't move them or anything since there's no
window manager running.  Usually what I do at this point is ps in one of
the xterms, then go and kill each x-related process one by one (this
doesn't feel right to me, and it doesn't work too smooth either, usually
resulting in crashes, coredumps, all sorts of nasty stuff).  Can anyone
help a complete and total X-newbie figure out how to quit the damn thing
and get back to the regular unix prompt the *right* way?  :)

2).  This new kernel I'm using for color (Taras' GENERIC 961024) does
something I never noticed before while booting; it puts up a line saying
something to the effect of:

root at sd1a swap at sd1b

This is a little alarming to me, since my one and only MacOS partition is
on the same drive as my root&usr and swap partitions.  The thing that pops
into my head is "Hey, wait a minute...isn't sd1b my *MAC* PARTITION?!" and
then panic ensues as I sit dreading the possibility that it's going to try
and write swap data to my MacOS partition, thereby destroying it (thought
it hasn't yet, and I'm certain MacBSD *must* have swapped at *some* point
by now).  So, my question is this: is there any way to find out for sure
which dev (it's gotta be either sd1b or sd1c) is my swap and which is my
MacOS?  This is something about which I can never be too careful, so...

...once again, thanks to all who've helped me get to this point, and all
those who continue to put up with me.  :)

3). Okay, so it's not a couple...one more thing: now that I'm using this
old 8-bit card, I of course sacrifice my ability to do 24-bit stuff under
MacOS (like Photoshop, etc).  It's kind of a hassle to switch them in and
out, physically, so my question is: can I just keep them *both* in my
machine, both plugged into nubus sockets, and just switch between them by
plugging my monitor into whichever one I want to use?  Or will having both
plugged into nubus at the same time confuse it?  Anyone know?

   ____  _             __     __   "Great spirits have always encountered
  / __ \(_)__  ___ ___/ /__ _/ /__   violent opposition from mediocre
 / /_/ / / _ \(_-</ _  / _ `/ / -_)   minds."
/_____/_/_//_/___/\_/_/\_/_/_/\__/               -- A. Einstein