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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!gmi!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.duke.edu!solaris.cc.vt.edu!uunet!epiwrl.entropic.com!usenet From: kenh@entropic.com (Ken Hornstein) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Something WILD and crazy...8) Date: 3 Oct 1994 17:02:45 -0400 Organization: Entropic Research Lab, Washington, DC. Lines: 31 Message-ID: <36prhl$34j@epiwrl.entropic.com> References: <36hkq5$8ru@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> <36hnnt$p02@orion.cc.andrews.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: epiwrl.entropic.com In article <36hnnt$p02@orion.cc.andrews.edu>, Andrew Gillham <gillham@andrews.edu> wrote: >Actually, a friend of mine and I have talked about a 'native GUI OS' >(ala the evil Macintosh, but wih a 'Real OS(tm)') Its an entertaining >topic, but I don't know whether it would be worth doing.. >A move in that direction could be to do something similar to the SGI >boxes, where you're in 'GUI mode' even before the system has come up >completely. (well, that's my don't-own-an-sgi observations..) Most of that glitzy SGI boot stuff is done by a really overly complicated boot rom; you'll note that when the SGI boots, that big window you get is really just a plain window (the same window you get when you go into the ROM monitor). The NeXT did something similar. It's nice for the non-computer user, but I never felt it was something worth putting a whole lot of time into (IMHO). >I suppose this could be done by writing a new 'pc0' or 'vt0' console >driver that slams your video card into graphics mode, and slaps up >some basic "windows" that are actually just virtual consoles. The >kernel messages would still go to '/dev/ttyv0' or whatever which would >actually be one of these cheapo windows. I imagine you might even >be able to use MGR as it is pretty small. (relative to X) >Then when you actually start X, the console driver would work similar to >how pcvt supports multiple X servers, i.e. your Xserver starts up >on a different virtual screen, while this cheapo GUI thingy is still >on another VS. Don't know, just running off at the mouth.. :-) I never quite understood how the NeXT worked, but on the SGI all you're really getting is just XDM running on the main display (all the boot monitor stuff goes away after the machine is up). --Ken