Re: Beta Testers required to test generic i386 graphics framebuffer device

Geert Uytterhoeven (Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be)
Mon, 6 Apr 1998 13:06:56 +0200 (CEST)

On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, Michael Weller wrote:
> 5) VBE 2.0 does
> give access to functions callable in protected mode, but ONLY to set
> colors in the color lookup table and to do page flips when no linear
> frame buffer is used. It is clear to me that this is intended for games
> which switch graphics modes using a DOS extender and only change colors
> and page flip directly from protectmode for performance reasons.

...

> Actually, as most people seem to be happy with an X style setup (that is
> one screen rez al lthe time (maybe with some text console, which can
> easily be emulated in software), this doesn't sound like such a weird idea
> to me. After all, countless Sun and other systems work in a way like this.
> That is, without many video modes and some software text emulation. I'd
> miss support for several video modes though.

So if you have code to set the palette and know where the linear frame buffer
(with 8/16/24/32 bpp packed pixels) is, you can write a frame buffer device for
that one resolution and have

- an emulated text console using fbcon
- an X server using XF68_FBDev (currently 8 bpp only, I'm working on this)

I give you 3 hours to write the frame buffer device, and one extra hour to fix
the endianness bugs that still might be present in fbcon-cfb*.c :-)

Greetings,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven                     Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Wavelets, Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP}  http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/
Department of Computer Science -- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven -- Belgium




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