root@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Martin Walter) (01/06/90)
Just I finished the installation of the R4 core system at my Sun 4/60 without any problems. Thanks to all who made this great software! The only disappointment for me was the missing usage of the GX graphics accelerator. R4 runs also with the XNEWS with very good performance, but due to memory reasons I would like to use the pure Xsun. Is there any possibility to enable Xsun to USE the GX ? -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Internet: mawa@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (132.230.1.1) | Rechenzentrum Uni X.400: G=martin;S=walter;OU=ruf;P=uni-freiburg;A=dbp;C=de | Freiburg, Germany
tve@sprite.berkeley.edu (Thorsten von Eicken) (01/06/90)
In article <1990Jan5.233228.7576@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de> root@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Martin Walter) writes: > >Is there any possibility to enable Xsun to USE the GX ? >_____________________________________________________________________________ >Internet: mawa@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (132.230.1.1) | Rechenzentrum Uni >X.400: G=martin;S=walter;OU=ruf;P=uni-freiburg;A=dbp;C=de | Freiburg, Germany X11R4 uses the cgsix board as a dumb framebuffer. The ioctls handle the colormap and map the framebuffer into the server's address space. We are not running SunOS and had to write our own code to handle the colormap. It turned out Sun wouldn't tell us *anything at all* about the GX: they are worried about GX clones (did I head SolBrn?). I spent a lot of time with forth-hacking and finally got it running. I also figured out how to use the hardware cursor of the GX, but I haven't incorporated it into X. I plan to play with the GX sometime... Well, after all that, I guess the answer to your question is: there is no way to "enable" the GX. You can either rewrite parts of the server to use Sun's lowest level library (pixrect?), or figure out how the GX works, unless Sun tells you that. I hear MIT tried to run X on the GX but found it not worth it, but that's hear-say-hear-say info, any comments by someone who knows? Thorsten von Eicken tve@sprite.berkeley.edu
rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (01/07/90)
Is there any possibility to enable Xsun to USE the GX ? We at MIT have no plans to produce Sun-specific graphics code (whether pixrects or anything else). If someone else develops code and donates it to us (and it's actually faster :-), we might consider supporting it in the future. If for some reason you really don't want to use OpenWindows to get GX performance, you might also contact Quest; they're saying they will bring out GX support on an R4 base.
rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (01/07/90)
I hear MIT tried to run X on the GX but found it not worth it, but
that's hear-say-hear-say info, any comments by someone who knows?
My group has never tried to produce GX-specific code, or pixrect code.