@cornell.UUCP (04/08/87)
Welp, I've almost completed porting X to our vision and robot controller (Automatix) and thot if someone else out there was thinking about porting X to a dumb graphics device, I could give them some hints. Our controller has a memory mapped pixel buffer. The device dependent layer assumes at the lowest level only two routines, read a pixel and write a pixel. Everything else in between (pixel fill, tile, clipping text, etc) had to be done in software. I used shared memory between the server and client. In a couple of weeks I will have completed interfacing a mouse to the system. Its a really neat mouse. It runs off of the power of the RS232 port (DTR), and is compatible with several different protocols. It has software settable baud rate and report rate. At $99, you can't go wrong! Its made by LogiTech. I can send more info if people are interested. For those of you porting X to new machine, its not as hard as people say. It took me about 2 months, but I had no hardware support. It would make life a lot easier with a smart graphics chip. Also, the mouse driver is taking up a lot of that time as well. We also didn't have Unix sockets. X is a great (free!) product, and if I can help proliferate it, all the better! Jeff Walker Automatix 1000 Tech Park Drive Billerica, Ma. 01821 (617) 667-7900 x2037 ...linus!vaxine!jww