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From: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad)
Subject: X11r5 on ANY VGA 386 < 2.3M
Message-ID: <1992Oct23.135627.5075@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg>
Organization: Nanyang Technological University - Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1992 13:56:27 GMT
Lines: 116
I have reasonable confidence that XFree86, the X11r5 version for 386
machines can run on most VGA cards. The color server, and selected fonts,
and xinit, xterm which are important for the minimal X installation,
take up less than 2.3Mbyte or 1.45Mbyte compressed, at nova.cc.purdue.edu
/pub/386BSD/submissions.
The installation install script has some problems but will be
improved with more feedback. To find errors, you must pipe the standard
error to a file using
X >& error
where error is the error file.
The colour version of the server only supports selected vga cards
namely:
Tseng Labs:
et3000
et4000
?
gvga
Paradise Card:
pvga
ATI vga wonder:
ati
Trident 8900C:
tvga8900
If you do not have any of these VGA cards, then you just have to get the
mono server from XFree distribution. It is called X386mono.
It is a generic VGA driver with only 64 K RAM support so the maximum
resolution is 800X600.
I've supplied a generic Xconfig that can cater for all cards by using the
default clock of 25Mhz for 640X480 and 36Mhz for 800X600 .
To start the mono server use, "xinit -- X386mono >& error"
Almost all cards support these frequencies, so even thought you cannot
program the clocks, just use the default.
One problem which you may face is the choice of mouse. Just use
the 3 button mousesystems mouse which is the recommended one.
A $10 one should be sufficient. (can cost as low as US $8, in Singapore)
However if you want to use your favourite mouse, you can choose,
busmouse
logitech
microsoft
mmseries
mouseman
mousesystems
I have tested the X on 8 and 16 Mbyte RAM 386/25 PCs and the response is
reasonably fast. I believe 4Mbyte RAM should be the minimum for a 386bsd
system, but 2Mbyte can run it but at a very slow pace, and preferably use
only the mono server.
running ps -lx on my 16Mbyte system is:
UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND
0 0 0 0 -18 0 0 0 7b354 DLs ?? 0:00.02 (swapper)
0 1 0 2 10 0 112 0 wait Is ?? 0:00.25 (init)
0 2 0 0 -18 0 0 0 71c74 DL ?? 0:00.07 (pagedaemon)
0 25 1 0 2 0 160 0 select Is ?? 0:00.25 (syslogd)
0 37 1 0 18 0 72 0 pause Ss ?? 0:00.10 (update)
0 39 1 0 18 0 164 0 pause I ?? 0:00.06 (crond)
0 41 1 0 2 0 164 0 select Ss ?? 0:00.07 (routed)
0 43 1 3 2 0 180 0 select Is ?? 0:00.16 (lpd)
0 48 1 11 2 0 180 0 select Is ?? 0:00.37 (inetd)
0 49 1 3 2 0 332 0 netcon Is ?? 0:00.37 (sendmail)
0 74 73 9 2 0 1608 0 select S ?? 6:00.97 (X)
0 80 78 0 3 0 512 0 ttyin Is+ p0 0:03.07 (bash)
0 83 77 14 18 0 488 0 pause Ss p1 0:00.98 (bash)
0 122 83 44 39 0 252 0 - R+ p1 0:00.44 (ps)
0 123 83 11 2 0 116 0 netio S+ p1 0:00.11 (more)
0 82 76 4 18 0 504 0 pause Is p2 0:01.67 (bash)
0 104 82 0 3 0 544 0 ttyin I+ p2 0:05.94 (kermit)
0 105 104 0 3 0 544 0 ttyin I+ p2 2:48.70 (kermit)
0 81 79 7 3 0 476 0 ttyin Is+ p3 0:00.52 (bash)
0 61 1 0 18 0 504 0 pause Is vg 0:01.91 (bash)
0 72 61 0 18 0 436 0 pause I+ vg 0:00.58 (sh)
0 73 72 1 10 0 204 0 wait I+ vg 0:00.30 (xinit)
0 75 73 0 2 0 784 0 select S vg 0:02.63 (twm)
0 76 75 0 2 0 892 0 select I vg 3:20.62 (xterm)
0 77 75 1 2 0 892 0 select S vg 0:01.30 (xterm)
0 78 75 0 2 0 892 0 select I vg 0:02.13 (xterm)
0 79 75 1 2 0 888 0 select I vg 0:00.97 (xterm)
For X386mono server the ps -ux is similar except for the X386mono:
root 189 0.0 0.0 892 0 vg S 10:47PM 0:07.42 (xterm)
root 188 0.0 0.0 788 0 vg S 10:47PM 0:02.21 (twm)
root 187 11.7 0.0 1360 0 ?? S 10:47PM 0:25.56 (X386mono)
386bsd is a complete networking OS already but may not have text sharing
so could use more RAM than necessary.
I cannot be held responsible to anyone destroying their monitors but if your
VGA cards by default is set to the lowest frequency, i.e. 25Mhz, you're OK,
most monitors can handle slight variation in horizontal and vertical
frequencies.
I'm cross posting to comp.os.minix because some still think that
X11 requires a lot of resources. Some users of 386bsd & linux may still have
this perception.
In fact X11 is a simple graphic library organised in the form of
a server. The communication support does not take that much code, and can
even be minimised to just a pipe.
The competitor, MGR can hardly be much smaller than this. The
advantage of using X11 is that there are already a lot of applications,
and documentations for it, unlike other window managers.
I surely welcome you all to X11 programming, just as I have first
started last week.
--
Othman bin Ahmad, School of EEE,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2263.
Internet Email: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg
Bitnet Email: eoahmad@ntuvax.bitnet