Re: Native Xorg on sparc confirmed working

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hello,

On Nov 10, 2008, at 2:57 AM, Volker A. Brandt wrote:

> > as the subject says I built a userland with Xorg from yesterdays
> > sources and native Xorg works on my SS20 with an 1MB TurboGX.
>
> Impressive.  Thanks for your work!

Not quite done yet :)

> [...]
> > This will allow 24bit
> > colour on SS20s with CG14 ( unaccelerated until someone manages to  
> > dig
> > up documentation for the SX rendering engine found on SS20
> > mainboards )
>
> In March we had a little discussion here in port-sparc, and the result
> was that someone went to the Sun web page and requested that they
> release the documentation to the public.  In August, the status on the
> web page was changed to "Unable to locate". For details, see:
>
>  http://wikis.sun.com/display/FOSSdocs/Home

I know, I think I started it ;)

> I guess this means that Sun is unable to release any docs since they
> do not have them any more.  So it seems that the only way left to get
> at the SX doc is for one person to actually look at the Solaris source
> code for the driver, write a spec, and for some other person to
> implement the spec.

Sun's X11 DDX for the SX is the source code we need to look at. For  
setup of things like VRAM ( since the SX can also render into RAM or  
use RAM as z-buffer ) we can rely on the firmware to do The Right  
Thing for now. All I need to know is how to make the SX do tricks like  
fill and copy rectangles, maybe do some alpha blending as well ( I'm  
pretty sure the SX can do at least a little bit of that too ).
Unfortunately the Solaris headers aren't useful - they give a few  
hints but that't it.

have fun
Michael