[9fans] VBE 1.2/2.0+ functions for Plan9

["Devon H. O'Dell" <dodell@sitetronics.com>]

Hello list,

I know it's been discussed a lot in the list before, and scoffed at due 
to various reasons (having to hack to activate the VESA support in the 
first place, it not necessarily being SMP-safe and the fact that it's 
not accellerated), but I'd like to implement VESA support for Plan9. I 
got some tips to look in Inferno code, since Roger Peppe had implemented 
a VESA driver there. After looking through the Inferno source, it 
appears that any VESA code has been left out of the public source.

I've tried Plan9 a couple times in the past 6 or 7 years, and have only 
successfully used it a couple of times due to unsupported video. I'm 
interested in writing a VESA driver. I know it's slow, but at least 
it'll allow Plan9 to support 90-something percent of the video cards 
manufactured in the last N years. Whether or not it is accellerated, 
it's better than nothing at all.

I'm writing to the list to ask if anybody has already started on this 
perhaps sometime in the past and has code left over that I could start 
with. If the code is available under a BSD or similar license, that'd be 
great, because I'd like the code to be available under a BSD or similar 
license.

Otherwise, is anybody interested in working with me on this? I'll need 
to do a decent bit of source code reading and such before I can be 
productive, but I'm wanting to start right now. Any / all help and tips 
would be appreciated.

Kind regards,

Devon H. O'Dell