James Simmons <jsimmons@acsu.buffalo.edu> wrote:
> > Uhm, can someone please tell me the reason for the existence of the mdacon
> > driver ?
>
> Its been around since the begining. Its fun to have.
WHY? Because I could not go without my MDA. I use it all the time, I love it.
I am going to have to buy a new machine soon before Microsoft convinces
the people who make motherboards not to include ISA. I need ISA for my MDA,
unless of course somebody wants to make a PCI MDA card.
Edward thinks about the notebook he is about to buy - Can I get a PCMCIA MDA
card? Or even better - a PCMCIA ISA bridge, that would be nice.
Anyway, enough stupid off topic ranting.
I have to disagree that it has not been with us since the beginning, it was
only merged in 2.2, before that you had to patch the kernel to get the MDA,
and the code was quite different. (Or, on the other hand you probably mean
that it has been available as a patch since the beginning, in which case you
are correct.)
Anyway, enough stupid off topic ranting.
> > Or is it not possible to have consoles on different display adapters at the
> > _same time_ ?
>
> Yes. I haven't tried to see what happens when you run mdacon and hgafb at
> the same time on the same hardware. I don't think it would be a good
> result.
As I say, I use two consoles all the time. My S3 Virge runs the VESA
framebuffer at 1024x768, and my MDA is just 80x25. And it all works.
> P.S
>
> Ed did you try out the patch to see if it fixed your problem.
I did try it briefly, and it did seem to work. I was messing with my attempts
to write a framebuffer device driver for my S3 Virge at the time so my kernel
was not being very stable, so I could not run many tests on the patch.
I have a pile of PCI VGA 4 graphics cards here, and I am going to try booting
each with, and without the MDA in the machine to see what I get.
Expect a detailed report shortly, well, when I have some time.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 23 2000 - 21:00:11 EST