*BSD News Article 18296


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From: ivie@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: NetBSD questions
Message-ID: <1993Jul12.133926.69919@cc.usu.edu>
Date: 12 Jul 93 13:39:26 MDT
References: <CA1FBq.76q@rex.uokhsc.edu>
Organization: Utah State University
Lines: 17

In article <CA1FBq.76q@rex.uokhsc.edu>, ben@rex.uokhsc.edu (Benjamin Z. Goldsteen) writes:
> -Are there any plans for virtual screens (ala Linux)?  I found them
> pretty handy when I tried Linux out a while back.  One thing about Linux
> is that the terminal drivers feels much faster.  Most UNIX consoles have
> pretty slow consoles (they expect you to scoot right on into X), but
> Linux felt like direct writes to video RAM.

Most UNIX consoles are direct writes of pixels to video RAM. PCs have character
mode video in addition to graphics mode, so it's quicker to toss the characters
around; you only have to scroll 2KB of data instead of god-knows-how-many
MB.

Of course, you could also just juggle the start and end registers of the
6845, and only have to clear a line when you scroll...

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu