Text 4980, 126 rader
Skriven 2006-01-13 05:43:06 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38.9)
   Kommentar till text 4979 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
Ärende: Are you selling any of t
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Hey James!

Jan 13 10:59 06, James Bradley wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 JB> Let me know when surf's up. I'll be there with bells on. <-;

Will do ... if I survive it that is.

 JB> I had my first look at links with this Gentoo "install.html". Maybe 
 JB> my
 JB> accustomed browsing just didn't care for the page down mode, versus 
 JB> the line at
 JB> a time I've become used to. It was nice to see url tags embedded. 

Try the spacebar for paging.  That is the old fashioned way, decided way back
when keyboards had the basic keys like a typewriter.  That was also before the
www existed, nevermind publically accessable.

I thought you were an oldtimer at this?  What gives?  ;-)

 JB> Because both are TTL devices; but the VGA needs two more 
 JB> communication channels
 JB> than does an RS232, no? Sure... And H-V sync is separate IIR.

At least.  I have the specs somewhere.  However a serial connection can't do
VGA but can do plain Jane black and white output which is what I thought we
were talking about.  For VGA (16 colour) you'd need to output to two specially
wired serial ports and then write a driver to know how they are wired out.  

Piece of cake!  :::snicker:::

It can be done but if VGA is needed then I'd just use the VGA port and
nevermind little lcd displays.  You are complicating things man!!!  They work
just fine without VGA on a standard serial port.

 JB> After the blurry eyed reading, the 'second head' indicates a second 
 JB> physical
 JB> vid card to the Linux camp, where the MS world calls a Herc 
 JB> monochrome ?GA,
 JB> with a composite out, 'dual head'. 

When I do a 'dmesg|less' and look for the relevant info I come up with;

matroxfb: Matrox Millennium G200 (AGP) detected
PInS memtype = 3
matroxfb: MTRR's turned on
matroxfb: 1280x1024x16bpp (virtual: 1280x3276)
matroxfb: framebuffer at 0xD6000000, mapped to 0xd8880000, size 8388608
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 160x64
fb0: MATROX frame buffer device

I only have one head ... errr ... the Matrox that is, but when I have two with
the g400 it included a 'fb1:' part for the second head.

 JB> This kernel (2.6.12-gentoo-6) was more than encouraging when I was 
 JB> doing the
 JB> menuconfig dance, so I'm suspecting I should be able to just compile 
 JB> the right
 JB> 'front end'... <AS IF! |->

Heh, heh.  I am not sure about any of that.  Right now I am growing my own
based on gcc-4.1 and fixing the nitpicky details as I go along.  Looking pretty
good right now.

 JB> So, you *are* talking about a second frame buffer device obviously. 

Right.  It should be fb1.  fb0 should be the regular vga head and the funky
g400 breakout box connector fb1.  I got the damn thing working ... once.  It
was a pain for sure.

 JB> fb0 was
 JB> already in existance here, as reported when I tried to mknod it. Or, 
 JB> am I just
 JB> confused so far?

Probably.  :-)

Did you build your own kernel?  You'll probably have to.

 JB> Laugh... Well, I *was* using what Matrox bundled with it. LDP said 
 JB> I'd need a
 JB> matroxfb to have any success with it now.

Right.  You'll need a proper kernel.  If you want I could sent you a config
file for a 2.6 kernel that ought to work spiffy for you.

 MK>> I meant the 'Win98' part.  ;-)

 JB> What, are we comparing Apples to ... No wait... 
 JB> Bananas to fertilizer... Er... Ah...

Whatever.  That is why I thought suggesting a better benchmark for all this.

 MK>> diagrams once I have that information.  Also my neighbour
 MK>> likes to print stuff so I just farm that work out to him.
 MK>> I like to call that 'networking'.  :-)

 JB> Oh... Send me one of THOSE. Two if they are cheaper that way!

Sure.  Maybe I'll write a book with lots of pretty pictures.  ;-)

 JB> I haven't a single printer plugged in right now,

Over a decade since I had one.

 JB> ceramics-porcelain. Sure having fun 'spilling' things on the carpet 
 JB> for the
 JB> time being. <EG>

Sweet.

 JB> The old Motorola came with two *nice* new terminals. They displayed 
 JB> text for me
 JB> WAY better than Amber. 

The amber ones made my eyes bleed.

 JB> You bring the Brandy, and I'll spit-shine the glasses. <G+D>

Single malt scotch and we'll consider it a done deal.

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.1.2
 * Origin: The Pointy Stick Society XV - Linux Point (1:261/38.9)