Mail Archives: djgpp/1993/09/28/11:34:08
On Tue, 28 Sep 1993 09:34:17 +0200, "Rolf H W Poser" <hwposer AT rkw-risc DOT cs DOT up DOT ac DOT za>
wrote:
> Before I go out and try for hours to write my own driver for the 8800CS,
> I would like to know whether someone has any info on it.
>
> I've ftp'd the whole djgpp directory of our South African mirror site
> (ftp.sun.ac.za : /pub/msdos/djgpp) and I've also tried comp.sources.wanted .
>
> The specific application that we're trying to get going is XAppeal, a network
> X interface from dos (very much the same idea as XVision). The demo version
> of it costs nothing and does not do the whole works, but it does support
> 4 xterms. The demo runs only in 640*480*256 mode. The card seems to have enough
> memory (8*128k chips) so that should not be a problem. I've tried all the
> cbg drivers and the drivers that came with XAppeal. Interesting to ne that
> Xappeal was written with the aid of Gnu C, and is commercial (!).
Interesting, but completely legal and fair. Did you ever read the GNU
GPL? Did you find a clause contrary to the use of GNU CC and related
tools to *COMPILE* a commercial application? All the sources that
build X Appeal are either proprietary, or public domain, or free for
commercial and noncommercial use. No GPL source is used.
We use a modified version of the GO32 DOS extender, and we hold a
license from DJ Delorie that allows its distribution with our product.
> To get to my questions :
>
> 1. Will the 8800CS work whatsoever ?
As far as we know, this old chip cannot be used in 256 color mode due
to design flaws. This is the reason why a driver for the 8800 is not
included in the DJGPP distribution.
> 2. Will it perhaps work in a different mode (ie. do we have to buy XAppeal) ?
X Appeal currently supports only 256-color modes, so if you buy the
commercial version you will get unlimited client connections and more
resolution, but the 8800 will not work.
> 3. Does anyone know of a driver available somewhere ?
See above.
> 4. Can anyone point me to people that are experienced with writing drivers ?
> 5. Or perhaps : Can anyone point me to a doc that will help me write my own.
> (ie. a document that will make it easy to understand for a CboffNOT) ?
See above.
> I thank you for your patience and hope that my message has brought with it
> some form of info for someone or that I will actually get a response....
Well, since you were asking information about an installation problem
of the X Appeal demo, the correct address was xappeal AT xtreme DOT it...
In any case, I am copying this answer to the djgpp mailing list, so
that we can try to make things clear. We were about to write to DJ
Delorie to discuss some questions related to video drivers, but your
message gives us the right way to introduce the matter.
First of all, some words of history.
The video drivers that are currently used in the X Appeal
distribution have the .GRD extension, but they are not exactly the
same drivers as the DJGPP original ones. We added two entry points to
support virtual screen sizes bigger than the physical video
resolution, and to use hardware panning. We did also a lot of
modifications and bug fixes, especially on the Trident driver, and
developed other drivers for unsupported chips.
We do know that our decision to keep the standard .GRD extension was
a mistake, and now we are working on a new release which will use the
"new format" driver (from LIBGRX, originally with the .GRN extension),
but this time we will name them with the .GXN extension to avoid
confusion (X stands for eXtended, or for X Appeal, as you like).
This different naming should stop users from trying to move the drivers
from the plain DJGPP distribution to our demo, leading to errors due
to the lack of the additional entry points.
Now we are wondering if this decision is really the right one, or if
we could try to do something different and with broader acceptance.
We think that the small extension we did to the driver interface
could be useful also for other applications, so we are available to
share our driver interface specification and sources with the DJGPP
community, if this can help to gather a better collection of video
drivers that can be useful to everyone.
We remember that a similar extension was announced for LIBGRX 1.03,
and we are also available to change our interface accordingly, if and
when this new version will be out (any news about that?). We are also
willing to beta test GO32 1.11 and/or LIBGRX 1.03, if that can help
to get faster to the target.
If someone is interested in this proposal, please email us with a
suggestion of a site where to upload our drivers (we were thinking
about the pub/msdos/djgpp/pub directory on omnigate). We will also
upload a small test program to show the extended features; any
feedback (positive or negative) on the driver performances would be
greatly appreciated.
Best regards
--
Giovanni Novelli
Xtreme s.a.s. - Livorno, Italy
xappeal AT xtreme DOT it
- Raw text -