Hello Gilbert,

   ASB> I've been trying (although not very hard) to achieve
      > the opposite effect: squeezing more characters on a
      > larger screen.

   GF> this is rather easy. the kernel will use the biggest
     > font it has on boot. if you check your kernel, you
     > will see it uses a font called GALLANT per default, so
     > you can add an option to your kernel config to select
     > a smaller font. if you choose a small one like a 8x8
     > one, you will end up with a nice and huge console :)

This is really interesting. At the moment I'm running mostly
/i386 (I should have mentioned that), and if I understand
correctly wscons just get to use the modes offered by the
vga driver, which are a reasonable subset of the text modes
provided by the display adaptor.

   GF> ...you can see the available fonts by checking sources
     > there :
     >
     > /usr/src/sys/dev/wsfont

It's been a while since I looked in there.  I will check it
out again now.

   GF> the default one is (if i remember correctly) the
     > GALLANT_12x22 but i'm not sure. last time i played
     > with fonts was with openbsd on a 12" ibook.

What was the native screen mode of the 12" iBook? Were there
any larger fonts available?  Is it possible to drive the
console in a different screen mode?  (two questions asked
with Mark in mind).

   GF> i have, at that time, wrote a kind of how-to that
     > explained how to install openbsd on that machine (i
     > later installed netbsd but i never wrote a howto about
     > it - i can upon request of course but it's pretty
     > close to how openbsd behaves)

I would welcome the howto, even though I don't have an iBook
to try it on at present.

   GF> url for the smaller font config :
     >
     > http://open.bsdcow.net/articles/ibook-faq/ibook8.html

Thanks, I'll check that out.

   GF> you just have to select a bigger font. this works
     > pretty nice on framebuffer machines like the ibook is
     > and most mac machines :)

Nice.  This might work on my SPARCstation or older 68k Macs.

Thanks,
   - Andy Ball