Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Russ Cox]

  On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
  explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver? 

Most of the drivers were written assuming that
the only color depths were 1, 2, 4, and 8.
When we put true-color support in (and thus broke
the assumption), we went through and explicitly
disabled >8bpp in all the old drivers.

Russ

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[William Staniewicz]

Several times a day I switch effortlessly between my
Plan9 and FreeBSD/Win95 partitions. I use the floppy
most of the time to get back into Plan9 but have no
problem with the boot loaders.

Bill

> Having been pointed at the docs, you have to go
> out of your way to be compliant, so, as predicted,
> the Plan 9 PC kernels are not.
> 
> It doesn't seem worth running after, either, since
> our PC boot process depends on 9load doing things like
> putting plan9.ini in memory somewhere for us.  So the
> "kernel" that a multiboot booter would be handed would
> really be 9load, and it just seems ridiculously complicated.
> 
> As far as coexisting with other PC operating systems,
> which is a broader issue, Plan 9 is perfectly happy to
> sit within its own partition.  If you mark the partition
> active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
> NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
> although I haven't tried recently.
> 
> Russ

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Micah Stetson]

> active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
> NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
> although I haven't tried recently.

It certainly does work.  I was using LILO to switch between
Plan 9 and Linux up until I got fed up with having to leave
Plan 9 to use Linux.  Now my desktop machine runs only Plan 9
and the GNU/Linux box has been put off in another corner of
the room where I can access it with vncviewer if I really
feel the need.  Mutliboot works, but it's a pain if you have
to switch very often.

On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver?  I tried to find
some documentation on the chipset to see if I could add
support myself, but the company that owns the specifications
(no longer Cirrus Logic) charges $25 just to download the
information.  For that price, I might as well buy a video
card with better support (I probably have one laying around
here anyway).  However, if somebody is working on improving
the driver, I'll just wait and save myself the trouble of
digging up another video adapter.

Micah

Re: [9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[jmk]

On Sat Jan  6 20:55:18 EST 2001, rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com said:
>   On another topic, why are color depths greater than 8 bpp
>   explicitly disabled in the clgd542x driver? 
> 
> Most of the drivers were written assuming that
> the only color depths were 1, 2, 4, and 8.
> When we put true-color support in (and thus broke
> the assumption), we went through and explicitly
> disabled >8bpp in all the old drivers.
> 
> Russ

Also, adding >8bpp support is fairly easy for those chips, but
without any acceleration it becomes unacceptably slow. I certainly
have paper copies of the manuals and also perhaps some PDFs if
anyone wants to do the work.

--jim

[9fans] plan 9 and multiboot

[Russ Cox]

Having been pointed at the docs, you have to go
out of your way to be compliant, so, as predicted,
the Plan 9 PC kernels are not.

It doesn't seem worth running after, either, since
our PC boot process depends on 9load doing things like
putting plan9.ini in memory somewhere for us.  So the
"kernel" that a multiboot booter would be handed would
really be 9load, and it just seems ridiculously complicated.

As far as coexisting with other PC operating systems,
which is a broader issue, Plan 9 is perfectly happy to
sit within its own partition.  If you mark the partition
active, it boots.  If you have another boot loader like
NTLDR or LILO jump to that partition, it should boot,
although I haven't tried recently.

Russ