*BSD News Article 11414


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!news.univie.ac.at!hp4at!mcsun!sun4nl!ctisbv!pim
From: pim@cti-software.nl (Pim Zandbergen)
Subject: Re: programming the VGA with 386BSD
Message-ID: <1993Feb20.232342.519@cti-software.nl>
Organization: CTI Software BV, The Hague, The Netherlands
References: <1993Feb19.231451.6605@mcshub.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 23:23:42 GMT
Lines: 20

dsantry@maccs.mcmaster.ca (Doug Santry) writes:

>I was wondering if anyone knows how to program the VGA under bsd.  I
>want to change the videomode to one of my SVGA modes and then turn
>on pixels, when done return to the standard text mode.  I assume that the
>kernel wouldn't let me write bytes to my VRAM because my session doesn't
>own the memory.  I also don't know how to change the videomode since I would
>have to write to the video card's registers.  Is there anyway to get the
>card's BIOS routines to work under bsd?  I have never done any UNIX low-level
>programming before so some advice or a solution would be greatly appreciated.

You don't mention which SVGA card you want to use.
If it's an et4000 you may be able to port the et4000 library
written by John Temples and posted to alt.sources and comp.sources.misc.
It was written for System V, though.
-- 
Pim Zandbergen                      domain : pim@cti-software.nl
CTI Software BV                     uucp   : uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!ctisbv!pim
Laan Copes van Cattenburch 70       phone  : +31 70 3542302
2585 GD The Hague, The Netherlands  fax    : +31 70 3512837