*BSD News Article 79096


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.mathworks.com!hunter.premier.net!news1.erols.com!news
From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Simutaneous mono and vga under FreeBSD...
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 19:23:12 +0000
Organization: Erol's Internet Services
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <32483520.628A@www.play-hookey.com>
References: <32388517.BA4@wsg.net> <3238632A.6516@www.play-hookey.com> <51eoiu$6ck@diemos.isdfa.sei-it.com> <323C1975.4FA7@www.play-hookey.com> <01bbaa1e$83d5fa80$070906c6@roanoke>
Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U)

Arlie Davis wrote:
> 
> Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> wrote in article
> <323C1975.4FA7@www.play-hookey.com>...
> 
> > Now, if you want the Hercules card to run in text mode (which was the
> > original stated requirement) it will occupy at least 32K at segment B000
> > (in half mode; 64K in full mode). You can't change this, and any VGA
> > graphics mode can't be allowed to use this memory space. This
> > tremendously limits the graphics modes and amount of memory they can
> > access directly.
> 
> I agree with everything you've written about simultaneously using multiple
> video adapters, except this.  Many video cards can map their frame buffers
> into a linear region of the processor's physical address space, far beyond
> the realistic end of physical memory.  For example, the Diamond Viper VLB
> does this (I think); it can map it's frame buffer to any of these physical
> addresses: 40000000H, 80000000H, or A0000000H.  (I may be wrong on the
> details, but the concept is right.)
> 

The concept is indeed correct. I can only conclude that the combinations
I was using at the time, for whatever reason, would not support this
mode of operation. Whether it was the video card, the ROM BIOS, the
support chipset, or whatever, I can't say now. All I can report is that
all such attempts resulted in disaster on two displays as soon as I went
into a VGA graphics mode. So, I gave it up as hopeless (which it was at
the time).
-- 
Ken

Are you interested in   |
byte-sized education    |   http://www.play-hookey.com
over the Internet?      |