Robert Black wrote:
> 
> On Feb 3,  9:28pm, Peter Berg wrote:
> > Subject: Generic console device ?
> > Hi,
> >
> > will the new console code allow to run console gfx based applications on all
> > supported platforms ? This would mean, the kernel has to provide drivers for
> > all possible gfx systems like VIDC, PCI cards etc. Perhaps by a hardware
> > independent kernel driver with loadable hardware driver backends as LKMs ?
> 
> This is the general idea. It should be possible to provide at least
> non-accelerated support for all graphics cards without special knowledge by the
> application. In addition I want to support multiple PCI graphics cards at the
> same time. The whole design of the new console is based around these
> considerations.

Just to follow up on Rob's perfectly correct comment, with the statement
(quoted in CGD style) "just because it can be done doesn't mean it
*will* be done"

If and when we support RiscPC II (which is I guess where a lot of people
are coming from) the chances are it'll just be VIDC. On our own PCI
hardware, we may support one or two different kinds of card (most likely
Matrox Millenium II, as that's what I have in my PC, together with some
sort of S3) probably just running in full screen VGA 80x25 text mode (or
whatever it is) with pcvt, pccons or something like that. We've had Mark
meddling with a PC VGA BIOS emulator which, if it works, could make some
of these things easier, but it's all quite problematic.

I guess someone could move over the drivers from one of these cards to
the RiscPC II if they want to put the effort in, but we're unlikely to
spend much time with the machine---chances are Acorn will loan us one to
get a port going but we won't be buying one (well the company, myself
and Mark won't anyway :) ).

	Cheers,

	Neil

-- 
Neil A. Carson   Business development, Causality and Chalice Technology
Causality:       WWW: http://www.causality.com email: neil@causality.com
Chalice Tech:    WWW: http://www.chaltech.com  email: neil@chaltech.com
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