[9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Russ Cox]

Plan 9 now supports using the VESA BIOS to set video modes.

There is a new aux/vga binary that you need to pull from sources.
Then grab a kernel from /n/sources/contrib/rsc/vesa/9/pc.
I've built 9pc 9pcf 9pcdisk and 9pccpuf.

Please test them out and then send me mail telling me:
 - type of video card you have
 - pci ids of video card: pci | grep ' 03\.'
 - what worked and what did not

Things to try include:
 - aux/vga -m vesa -p (should print available modes)
 - aux/vga -m vesa -l 1024x768x16 (switch to 1024x768x16)
 - aux/vga -l text (switch back to text mode)

Independent of the VESA support, the kernel can now change the screen
size/depth at any time, even while rio is running.  Just run aux/vga
-l new-size.

If you run aux/vga -l text while rio is running, you will switch to text mode
but not have a prompt (rio is still running, and the shell is waiting for
it to exit).  As long as you haven't clicked the mouse to change to another
window you should be able to blindly type aux/vga -l some-vga-size to
get back to rio.

Thanks to Roger Peppe, Fred Bonfanti, and Devon O'Dell for help
getting this far.

Russ

Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Devon H. O'Dell]

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On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 02:50:22PM -0400, Russ Cox wrote:
> Plan 9 now supports using the VESA BIOS to set video modes.
> 
> Thanks to Roger Peppe, Fred Bonfanti, and Devon O'Dell for help
> getting this far.
> 
> Russ

And thank you for putting in this all together!

--Devon

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Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Jack Johnson]

On 4/25/05, Russ Cox <russcox@gmail.com> wrote:
> Plan 9 now supports using the VESA BIOS to set video modes.
[...]
> Independent of the VESA support, the kernel can now change the screen
> size/depth at any time, even while rio is running.  Just run aux/vga
> -l new-size.

Just out of curiosity, do any of the recent changes affect possible
future support for multiple displays?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Russ Cox]

> Just out of curiosity, do any of the recent changes affect possible
> future support for multiple displays?

The support is still as hard as ever
(unless you play that cool panning trick
with a dual-head card).

Russ

Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Jack Johnson]

On 4/30/05, Russ Cox <russcox@gmail.com> wrote:
> The support is still as hard as ever

I only ask because I just came back from a conference where David
Thornburg spoke, mentioning some research I hadn't heard previously
regarding the positive impact multiple views of the same data have on
student learning.

Google found related info:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4089/is_200403/ai_n9366702

"Results suggest that having students practice with differently
formatted maps of the same information improves later comprehension of
standard contour maps. These findings have implications for teaching
complex graphics and for computer-assisted instruction design." --
Journal of Geoscience Education

So naturally it's got me thinking about dual-head again.

As an aside, he and I had a great conversation about the origins of
the scrollbar at PARC, including his test wiring of a platten knob to
the side of a terminal to flip pages.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Ronald G. Minnich]

one thing I have liked drawterm for is the ability to spread a single rio 
over 2 21" displays, running in linux in twin-head mode and drawterm'ed in 
to plan 9 under xen.

2 21" displays of rio or acme is pretty handy. You can easily grow it to 
four with the appropriate tricks ...

ron

Re: [9fans] vga bios mode support, on-the-fly screen resizing

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Sun, 1 May 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:

> one thing I have liked drawterm for is the ability to spread a single rio 
> over 2 21" displays, running in linux in twin-head mode and drawterm'ed in 
> to plan 9 under xen.

and, FWIW, this ought to work just fine in QEMU-based plan 9, right? Just 
get on your twin-head linux box and drawterm in to the qemu? 

Can qemu support an emulated vga that is two displays in size? I am not 
running qemu at present, so I don't know.

ron