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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA655 ; Sat, 06 Feb 93 16:01:33 EST Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hermes.chpc.utexas.edu!news.utdallas.edu!corpgate!bnrgate!bnr.co.uk!uknet!axion!lessen From: lessen@axion.bt.co.uk (Lee Essen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: [386bsd] Console Devices?? Message-ID: <1993Feb4.123606@axion.bt.co.uk> Date: 4 Feb 93 12:36:06 GMT Sender: news@axion.bt.co.uk Reply-To: lessen@axion.bt.co.uk (Lee Essen) Organization: British Telecom Research Labs Lines: 42 I've recently managed to install 386bsd 0.1 on my noname 386DX/40. After a few initial teething problems it all seems to be ok. (Just a side note: the amount of teething problems experienced with 386bsd were far less that with SCO, support is better too!) During my kernel builds (sometimes) the compilation of a module can take *ages* (sometimes is just stops - no disk access), if I stop the make and start again the modules compilation can be really quick. At the moment I only have 4MB, and am using the default 5MB swap - (i'de like to enlarge it but only have one drive and no backup medium and don't like the thought of starting again!). Is this small memory/swap the cause of this! Although I've got a vt100 terminal attached I thought that virtual consoles would be nice. I installed the 'syscon' package (on ref.tfs.com, in sos-syscons - or something like that!) I found a few problems with this, has anyone else experienced them, and Is there a better/improved virtual console driver around? 1. The kernel build failed - can't find 'get_char' when linking. This routine is declared static in the syscons.c file (not static in pccons.c) Allowing the function to be exported works but should I have to change the source? 2. By default is uses an iso font. This does not provide the 'line-draw' characters. This is *relly* annoying! You can load other font's but its a real pain. I managed to convert the normal font data files into a compileable form and used them instead of the iso one. It looked better but at least one of the line draw characters was wrong. 3. When using utree, scrolling the screen quickly causes a couple of the escape sequences to be missed and half the sequence to be displayed. (This doesn't happen with the normal console driver!) I've read through all the news articals with 'console' in the title and found a bit of heated discussion about the importance of VC's, but no real info about implementations. I'm about to start trying to add virtual console support to the standard console driver unless something is available! (emphasis on the word 'trying' in the last bit!) Lee Essen.