11 Aug
2012
11 Aug
'12
6:45 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 11:26 PM
To: cctalk
Subject: Re: X Window server for NEC 7220
In article <001e01cd7753$c746f6c0$55d4e440$(a)YAHOO.COM>OM>,
"Andrew Lynch" <LYNCHAJ at yahoo.com> writes:
the
The plan is to run Linux or NetBSD on the S-100
80386 CPU board which
would also be running the X window server. [...]
OK, linux or bsd should be easy to get the server running. The book I
mentioned explains how to start with getting things running by handling necessary parts of every server (input devices,
initialization, etc.) and
start
with simple getpixel/putpixel support.
From there you can layer everything else on top of that. All additional
work
after that is simply "tuning" to make things
go faster.
It will help if you have significant amounts of off-screen pixmap memory
from
which you can blt to the screen. In particular, xterm
will be very slow
without
this.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book
<http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum
<http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
Hi
I've ordered the book you recommended from Amazon. Yes, that's the plan.
Start with NetBSD in console only mode. Build up some graphics primitives
using the NEC 7220 and once there are enough start building the X server.
That's good news that we can start with just those X primitives since
certainly those can be written for the GDC.
Performance is a secondary issue at this point. I recognize using a NEC
7220 in bitmap mode is not its strong suite. My hope is that some of the
NEC 7220 graphics primitives can be used later to speed things along. It
will never be fast though. However until the situation with the VGA
chipset improves we are running out of options and need a buildable S-100
board that can display a bitmap.
The initial prototype S-100 80386 CPU board is limited to the memory on the
bus (16MB max). However this prototype is only intended to get the CPU core
internals working. The real system memory will be on the RAM expander. It
will have to be some sort of unique memory local bus since S-100 simply is
not able to provide enough RAM to make this feasible. Hopefully once the
RAM board is installed the X server performance will improve by doing some
of the operations off screen.
Thank you very much for your help. I appreciate it!
Have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch