Graphics support(vga) with ISC 1.0.6 on PS/2 Mod 80

John W. DeBoskey jwd at sas.UUCP
Tue Dec 5 02:26:54 AEST 1989


Hello All, 

   If this sounds like a gripe against ISC, forget it, it's not. I'm
just alittle frustrated at a lack of documentation and meaningful
return codes.

   I recently pulled the example graphics program off this group that
was written for AT&T Unix. Well, after figuring out the differences in
Virtual terminal and kd.h support, I got it to compile and allocate
a VT, but no graphics. Well, after messing around with a few of the
registers, I managed to get it into some 'SORT' of graphics mode which
appears(?) to be at the CGA level. However, meaningful graphics is still
a joke. I'm simply managing to get garbage on the screen when I should
be getting nice lines. :-) (you know, nice colorful ones)... 

  Ok. Now for questions. In kd.h, GRAPHICS mode is defined as 1, but
it doesn't really seem to put the console into graphics mode. I have
to do that myself with direct register access. The AT&T code seems to
have some SETMODE definitions to set the graphics mode that ISC does
not have. Is this support there but not doc'ed? 

   I have the init vals required for all the different modes, and I'm
getting ready to write my own device driver to swap modes around. Is there
interest in this? Or has someone done this already?

   On the good side, I'm real happy with the VT support. All the signals
are coming in at the correct time and the screen refreshes are all
working correctly. It's like you don't expect it to work the 1st time
and when it does, you're pleasantly supprised...  :-)

   If anyone has done anything similar to the above, I'd love to hear
from you, either good news or bad. 

                                          John W. De Boskey

jwd%sas at rti.rti.org      (w)
jwd%baggins at mcnc.mcnc.org(h)



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