Seeing where Tao Group is right now, I can't help but giggle about this any less than slashdot people would giggle about an AmigaOS port announcement. Have at it and all, but I see less point for this than a port for OS4 has. DE only really runs on Windows variants, so why not just use or port browsers for Windows variants?

Eh, saw the other post showing how old that project is... I didn't see any dates on anything at their site. Back then maybe it made some amount of sense to support DE with a browser.

Oh well for VESA then. It does make mroe sense to define the software API than the register set, but a standard register set would have been more convenient for this sortof OT discussion.

I hope to get my AmigaOne booting again soon, then I can work on finding time to do something toward Radeon again.

Here's another question toward a VESA generic driver. Is there a standard definition of VESA graphics registers, refresh rates, PLL settings, etc? Previous graphics like VGA and SVGA I think were completely standard everywhere, or at least to a large extent. If there is some absolute standard for all VESA registers, their offsets, sizes, field definitions, etc. then even without an x86 emulation it could be possible to write a driver to that standard register set instead of using x86 stuff, much like the current driver talks directly to Radeon specific registers or Voodoo driver talks directly to Voodoo specific registers. Yes, a great deal of work and all. Who's interested in researching this and has time to do so? I suppose a new thread should be made to further the VESA driver concept if it gets anywhere. If there is a standard register set it's the same kind of work as making or porting the Radeon open-source driver, but probably less as there's probably not much acceleration for lines, rectangles etc. to do as there is in chip-specific drivers.

@joerg

Quote:

I wouldn't mind having some generic VESA mode driver. Why? I've got a particular Radeon card who's chip IDs are not yet in the graphics driver ID list, so the system does not know to load the Radeon driver for it. It thinks there is no graphics card present. How do I add my card's IDs to the list? I could swap graphics cards around. I could have previously set up envoy or samba. There may eb a coupel other ways I haven't thought of. But with none of these already in place, it's an inconvenience. If I find my particular Radeon card somehow does not work withthe current driver, I could use it in VESA mode until we get things working with it properly without constantly swapping cards back and forth. If it fails the test then just reboot with VESA, make some edits, recompile and try again without the power cycle and board swaps. may not sound like much, but saving that small inconvenience would be beneficial to motivation. Sure, it'd be a lot of work to make a VESA driver, but I think it would be useful to have available if some issues could be solved.

You get into the question of how does the computer know what card is a graphics card or not to try the VESA diver with. If it's not already in the graphics card IDs list, do you ned to add your new card, and how? Or will there be some new field setting in uboot, and some list of PCI IDs you can get from uboot to know what the IDs of your new card are without booting Linux or something? You don't want the computer trying to run VESA driver on a sound card or SATA card etc but how will it know which is the graphics card? Wil it end up having the same problem with an unlisted gaphics card as I have with my particular Radeon card, and thus not really solve anything?

We do have the x86 emulation in uboot that runs graphics BIOS. But it lacks some instructions, as can be sen if you try and boot with an AllInWonder 8500-DV card, which fails due to non-implemented instruction error in said emulation. Is there enough there to run BIOS subroutines? I don' t know. Is it available to OS4 using this emulation? I don't know that too, but I am under the impression that anything uboot goes away when OS4 begins, and not much is handed off during the transition.

@Hans

I wouldn't know if you can plug in AGP and PCI-66 together. I would imagine it'd work find in a 66 slot. If not, plug it into a PCI-33 slot instead. As for switching between them, I don't know that too. I just swap cards installed, I've never had two together, habit from early on when that definitely would not have worked, but I don't know if that's changed or not.

Realize that the PCI vendor/device IDs need added to the list before they will be recognized, without that the computer doesn't know to try the Radeon driver on any card. That's my current problem with my A1, I need to swap in an older card in the list to install OS4, start over, edit the list to add my X1950, and then try that card again. Right now all I get is a message that no known graphics card was found to run an OS4 driver, but I do see that printed on the screen connected to the X1950. :) Ugh, if only I had time to fiddle with that stuff.

@Hans

Radeon X1550 pro directly for PCI slot:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103031
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161074

Radeon X1300 PCI:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129062

@MikeB

As a user I don't have much interest in PS3. I've got a desktop tied to a desk, I don't have much use for another, which is what the PS3 would be. I do want a laptop, which ps3 doesn't help with.

As a developer for OS4, there could be a few useful things to it. It's got bluray and HDCP, so one coule potentially use this as a platform to create players, drivers, APIs, secure data transfer stuff, etc. to play HD movies. I'd still prefer a laptop though. I'm really not likely to buy any more OS4 hardware that's not a laptop.

Where's the original post that started all the nonsense at AW.net? The stuff I see here this morning points to the AW.net stuff, and I haven't found the origin of it all back here yet...

@Atheist

Quote:

In an ideal world perhaps. But this world is not ideal. There are malicious people out there. Even when they know exactly what they're doing, it can be messing up your system. memory protection can help in that context to some extent. It is also useful if one person is debugging software on a machine that a second person is logged into. If unfinished software being tested crashes, it should not interfere with whatever that second person is doing. Heck, it shouldn't interfere with other things the same person is doing. If his first Hello World program somehow crashes, it should not stop him from listening to mp3 music. Also, if a program crashes, it should not also crash the disk drivers and filesystem tasks and thus invalidate your drive or partition. That really sucks, and is one thing I'd like memory protection to prevent. My last go-through with an invalidated drive took 3 or 4 weeks to recover from. I don't want to be stuck with that much wasted time again due to some stupid crash!

@Mikey_C

I don't understand why you'd sell your uA1 in retribution for no other hardware being sold. You already have something to run OS4 on...

I do agree though, that the situation is demotivating. I mostly use my ibook today. Not because I'm trying to in some virtual way to punish anyone for anything, it's just way more convenient that using anything else I have. My PC laptop is pretty useless, the battery when new only lasted 45 minutes. And it gets freakin hot, so even with a power cord it's still pretty uncomfortable to lounge on the couch with. My desktop PC and AmigaOneXE are tethered to my desk upstairs. But the ibook is very portable and the battery lasts a little over 3 hours, and convenience has trumped all other aspects of my computer time. I'd use AmigaOS a heck of a lot more if we could have it in a decent laptop form. Pity as the ibook is such a decent platform for PowerPC laptop... Before I had a laptop, I did much more on my Amigas, but now convenience is more important than obsession.