I'm going to design and build an X terminal

Hello fellow ClassicCmp'ers, In my search for a good X terminal I have played some more with the available options. I have looked at my hardware options (VS3100 or VXT 2000 hardware), examined already-existing software options (EWS, VXT and VXT EX), and considered constructing my own X terminal software Ultimately I was not satisfied with any of these options as a true solution that would make me happy, any of those would be a temporary kludge at best, so I have decided to take the radical approach: I'm going to design and build my own X terminal, and I mean hardware. I'll use PowerPC for the CPU and Linux for the OS. The CPU and OS choices are driven by experience: I have worked for a company that made PowerPC single-board computers and I know how to make one of those critters. There I developed a ROM monitor for PowerPC with the look and feel of a VAX console (>>> prompt, etc), and that's the ROM monitor I'm going to use. I also maintained Linux/PPC for those boards at that company, thus the experience deciding my OS choice. Also one of my friends has worked at the same company together with me as a hardware engineer, and I'll enlist his help on this package for the real "hard" hardware aspects. The X display consists of a screen, keyboard and mouse, and my choices for these three are as follows: an off-the-shelf PCI video chip with good XFree86 support for the screen, DEC LK201 for the keyboard, and many options for the mouse, including DEC mice, PC serial mice and USB mice. The server will be XFree86 modified to use the LK201 keyboard instead of a PC one. The use of LK201 keyboard is one design aspect I'm absolutely firm on. I'm very partial to this keyboard, and an X terminal that uses an LK201 is precisely what I want and what I cannot get from any modern offerings. The mouse is less critical to me: a mouse is a mouse. I do want a classic workstation mouse with 3 buttons and no wheel, but I don't really care if it's a DEC hockey puck or an old PC 3-button serial mouse. That's why I want to support many options for the mouse. (Are there any 3-button sans-wheel USB mice?) My tentative PowerPC CPU choice is MPC8250. It has a traditional 603e core with integrated memory controller, PCI interface (on which I'll hang the video and USB chips) and communication module (which I'll use for Ethernet and serial). I want to implement two independent Ethernet interfaces: one an RJ45 capable of 10 and 100 Mbps, the other a classic coaxial Ethernet interface with AUI and BNC ports. This way I can satisfy everyone as far as Ethernet goes. There will be 3 serial ports: one for LK201, one for DEC mice, and the remaining one a general-purpose EIA-232 port (DB25) that will be available for serial mice and for debug functions. The hardware will basically be a generic PowerPC diskless workstation with my StarMON ROM monitor (the one with the VAX console look and feel). StarMON will boot over Ethernet (a non-volatile setting will indicate which one) by broadcasting a BOOTP request and then TFTP'ing the boot image indicated in the BOOTP reply. The X terminal software that will be netbooted in this manner will be completely open source, but will be packaged up to function like an OSless X terminal, i.e., no writable file system, no user accounts, and no administration of or user exposure to the local OS on the terminal. The Linux kernel will be booted with a RAM disk read-only root filesystem which will also be fetched via TFTP at boot, and that filesystem will contain a special init that will run the X server and run the box like an OSless X terminal (XDMCP to a host specified in configuration on the BOOTP/TFTP host). Now there is only one thing remaining for which I seek advice from the great collective wisdom here: what should I use for the video chip? Being the recluse that I am, I know virtually nothing about modern video technology. Out of modern, readily-available PCI video chips, what do you think would be the most appropriate for a reasonable XFree86 server? As a ballpark I'm looking for 24 bits per pixel colour (I don't want to be limited by the colour map) and a resolution comparable to DEC's best offerings at tne height of the VAXstation era. It would have to be PCI; whether I go with the MPC8250 CPU or something else, it'll definitely have PCI but not AGP. I would appreciate any advice. MS