On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, der Mouse wrote:

> > as far I can see, there is no Xserver-support for NetBSD-next.
> 
> Is this really true?  Given how much I've done with X and NetBSD on
> NeXTs, I feel sure I could build a ddx layer for R6.4 without much
> trouble.

Greetings to the author of MouseX ;-). (I am still using it on NS.)

[...]
> If that's still of interest, drop me a line and I'll see what I can
> knock together.

This would certainly be very nice to have.

I've been thinking about the following: While direct framebuffer writing
is certainly fast enough for X (nicely proven by MouseX), I'm fairly sure
NeXT hardware has a DMA channel for video (and a video retrace interrupt). 

Is there an obvious way to integrate this into the design for a next68k X
server? (Even if only as something to be added later.)

There's a considerable difference in responsiveness between DPS and X on
NEXTSTEP/m68k, so this could make quite a difference in usability.

(I know that the NeXT windowserver is rumoured to have hand-optimized
assembler code in critical parts, so this is hardly a fair comparison.) 


If necessary I could try to dig up in my notes where the video DMA device
is mapped.

Timm
-- 
Timm Wetzel     	<twetzel@gwdg.de>
Biomed. NMR GmbH        Tel +49 551 201-1091    FAX +49 551 201-1307
Am Fassberg 11, D-37077 Goettingen, Germany