*BSD News Article 63285


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From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Hercules Video Adapter
Date: 28 Feb 1996 16:40:55 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research
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Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se, Rob Ballantyne
(ballanty@cs.sfu.ca) had the courage to say:

: So, I looked in the FAQs and the WEB pages and I couldn't 
: find an answer to my question (BTW the answer for Linux is on
: the WEB).

:   Q:  Can I run a FreeBSD system with a Hercules Video Apapter?

Oh no you don't. Stop right there. You need to be much more specific
than this. The things you need to tell us are:

- What _MODEL_ Hercules Video Adapter you're talking about (Hercules
  mono? accelerated color? PCI? ISA? VESA? Beuller? Beuller?)

- Whether you want to run just FreeBSD or X (people often ask 'Can I
  run FreeBSD with this graphics card?' when what they really want to
  know is if they can get XFree86 to work with it -- these are two
  different things, folks)

First off, FreeBSD itself should work just fine with practically any
display adapter you throw at it, including Hercules mono adapters.
If you don't have a graphics adapter, you can still run FreeBSD using
a dumb terminal attached to a serial port (unfortunately you can't
easily install this way -- the install program assumes that there are
virtual consoles present, which you don't have with a serial console).

Whether or not XFree86 supports your adapter is a whole other matter that's
completely beyond the control of the FreeBSD developers. You need to
bug the XFree86 developers about that. What I do know is this:

- The monocrhome Hercules adapter is supported by the XF86_Mono server.
- Prectically every color graphics adapter will work with the XF86_VGA16
  server.
- Many accelerated color graphics cards are supported, but I don't know
  if there are any Hercules cards among them.

-Bill

--
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-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
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