Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264230AbTH1U1L (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:27:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264224AbTH1U1L (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:27:11 -0400 Received: from pc1-cwma1-5-cust4.swan.cable.ntl.com ([80.5.120.4]:28583 "EHLO dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264290AbTH1U0b (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:26:31 -0400 Subject: RE: KDB in the mainstream 2.4.x kernels? From: Alan Cox To: "Tolentino, Matthew E" Cc: Andi Kleen , Greg Stark , Martin Pool , Linux Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <1062102278.24978.52.camel@dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.3 (1.4.3-3) Date: 28 Aug 2003 21:24:39 +0100 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1366 Lines: 31 On Iau, 2003-08-28 at 18:08, Tolentino, Matthew E wrote: > > I've seen workable non forth versions of the proposal yes. It isnt > > actually that hard to do for most video cards > > Interesting. So did the interpreted forth (or other) program then interact with the VGA BIOS or was it more generic? It consisted simply of a list of in/out values. Thats sufficient for most cards it turned out. It expected the X server to dump the sequence of values to the kernel. A BIOS32/ACPI/whatever is currently trendy service to save/restore video states would actually be a real help to a lot of things. I guess the perfect would API would support something like SaveCurrentMode SetMode (some properties) GetLinearFBDetails() RestoreSavedMode LoadColor() [for 8bit modes] ie roughly what vesa bios provides. Given the cost of executing a virtual machine like ACPI its less clear if cards could describe basic acceleration this way, at least if it was something like ACPI or forth which is hard to compile. A bytecode description that can be turned into native code obviously has different properties. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/