From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 in VMware?
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Message-Id: <20010213195620.0362919A05@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 14:56:08 -0500
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	Grr, all plan9 needs is a VESA 2.0 video driver. I know someone has talked
	about doing this (can't remember the reference,) and I intend to have a go
	myself once I've got plan9 up and running. Then we can dump all this
	reliance on bios signatures etc.

	I have to say, the way plan9 handles this stuff is surprisingly archaic!

I believe Roger Peppe did this for Inferno.
I explored doing it for Plan 9 a month ago
and got frustrated: by the x86 arcana needed
to pull it off, by the prospect of needing to
set up the graphics card in the boot loader
before doing the 32-bit mode switch, by the
blind faith you need to trust the video calls to
come back to you, by the fact that the VESA
interface doesn't handle any acceleration so
you'd still have to obtain chipset manuals to do that,
by the fact that nowhere does the VESA spec
guarantee that it will work on multiprocessors.

I agree that card identification using BIOS strings
should go, in favor of something like PCI ids,
but it looks like we'll be stuck writing card-specific
drivers for a long while still.  Everyone else does.

The hard part is not writing the drivers.  The hard
part (as discussed before) is getting the manuals
from the manufacturers.  Since acceleration requires
this anyway, the VESA stuff just doesn't seem worth it.

Please, prove me wrong.  I'd love to see it.

Russ