Two questions about the 3b1

Bruce Lilly bruce at balilly
Thu May 30 08:40:21 AEST 1991


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



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