Re: SS20 cg14 help

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> I talked to someone who designed graphics chips at Sun, unfortunately
> he didn't design the SX and I've been unable to contact the person
> who did.

:(  Still, that's more info than I've found. :-/

>> I actually meant, like the cg6 in that we have no docs on the
>> interesting parts, not in any other respect.
> Well, we know enough about the cg6 to make it useful ( as in
> accelerated console, accelerated X ), unlike the SX.

True - well, true if you consider it not "useful" if you can't get
faster than dumb-framebuffer speeds.  I find 8bpp windows on the cg14
fast enough to be useful, while 24bpp is painful - but having 24bpp
available on the same screen is very nice.

>>> I still hope SX docs will some day materialize on my doorstep,
>> Same here.
> I'm not holding my breath though.

Same here. :-/

> Btw. some kind soul finally sent me an S24 - I've been reading your
> description of the hardware and it looks like it will be enough to
> write a kinda-sorta accelerated X driver ( fills, simple copies and
> colour expansion, apparently that's all we can get out of the
> hardware ).

Yeah, the acceleration is pretty rudimentary, but should be faster than
dumb framebuffer operations by a factor of somwhere between 2 and 32,
depending on exactly what the operation is, if memory left over from
last time I looked at the S24 is accurate.

> Do you know what exactly is the difference between S24 and 8bit tcx?
> Can I treat the tcx like a retarded S24 with only the 8bit
> framebuffer?

I don't know.  It might be worth trying that to see if it works; I
haven't done so myself - in fact, I dojn't think I've played with the
8bit tcx at all.

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