Two questions about the 3b1

[timothy.d.george]

In article <1991May29.224021.27786 at blilly.UUCP> bruce at balilly (Bruce Lilly) writes:
>In article <10132 at idunno.Princeton.EDU> yong at pupthy.princeton.edu (Young Rene) writes:
>>Just curious:	Is there going to be a X-window server program on
>>	Unix-PC? mgr is nice, but very few useful programs exists.
>
>Probably not. Not because it's difficult (first step would be a driver
>that handles the keyboard and display) or because of memory or spped
>problems, but because it's not worth the effort. Prices of computer
>hardware are declining -- it's possible to get a system running X with a
>monochrome gray-scale display for a few thousand dollars. It would
>probably take quite a few man-weeks of time to port X to the 3b1, which
>has a small (720x ~300) 1-bit deep (no "gray"-scale) green display. Unless
>your time is nearly worthless, that's more expensive than buying an X
>terminal or small system.
>
>>	Is VIDPAL hardware patch helpful for porting X-Window?
>
>Nope. It does nothing to address size or depth or pixel aspect ratio of
>the display, which are the biggest limitations.
>
>-- 
>	Bruce Lilly		blilly!balilly!bruce at sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM


But the VIDPAL simplifies the access to the screen, making it very similiar
to a sun for the port. (Notice that MGR runs on Suns and 3b1's). Also, doing
a port would certainly give you experience in writing X code. And some of
the X terminals avaliable are 720*348 and cost around $1000. Without disk!

The port on the server should not take more than 2 man weeks of work. Hopefully
I'll get some more time soon to finish the X3b1 server in June.

Tom Roehr
attmail!scuzzy!tomr