9fans archive / 2000 / 12 / 48 /    prev next

From: "Russ Cox" <rsc@pla...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] VGA Hell, what else?!
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 02:22:21 -0500

  > ok second take. during install phases, M$ drives the screen as a 640x480
  > take-it-or-leave-it or is it even CGA 320x240?
  > 
  This has been explained before, although I didn't pay enough attention at
  the time to recall correctly now :-(  But it should be in the mailing
  list archives.

You could set up 640x480x16, but it would require
a soft cursor, which we currently don't do.
You're going to be miserable in 640x480x16 anyway
(it'd be greyscale, and the new colors really don't
look good in grey).

The theory is that you're going to have to run with
a decent vga eventually, so we might as well deal with
it up front.  I think it's more frustrating to do the
whole install in text and then not be able to run the
system for lack of a graphics card.

  A graphic ABI (what's that "B"?  'Tused to be a "P", can someone explain
  the difference?) would be wonderful, but looking at the X11(3) man pages,

B is binary.  That would involve running other people's
binaries too.

Russ