Subject: FYI newport abscon

From: Thomas Bogendoerfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:29:07 +0200

Hi,

yesterday I managed to bring up my Indy with the new console code riped
out from 2.1.109. Today I've implemented new scrolling stuff for newport
abscon, which will give us a really fast console. My simple test program, 
which does 1000 printf("\n") in a loop, gives me about 62000 lines/second
on a 160x64 sized console. I also tried that program on my Dual P-233
with a Matrox Millenium and got about 260000 lines/s on a 80x25 sized
console (which is less than 1/5 the size of the Indy console).

My next steps are to bring up hardware cursor and palette stuff. So stay
tuned...

Thomas.

-- 
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux,
you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)
                   [Linus Torvalds in <[email-masked]>]

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From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:39:37 -0400 (EDT)

On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Thomas Bogendoerfer wrote:
> abscon, which will give us a really fast console. 

This is very, very cool, and much needed to go on with 2.1.x kernel
development.  

> My simple test program, 

Well, this is very cool.  What kind of use is this?  aalib... man, that'll
be neat.  To hell with X when you have aalib.

Huge congratulations on the abscon stuff, Thomas.  

- Alex

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From: Thomas Bogendoerfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 11:27:12 +0200

> This is very, very cool, and much needed to go on with 2.1.x kernel

yes, and that's my primary goal. The closer we get to the current 2.1.x
kernel, the better we can merge our changes into Linus tree. And this is
the best thing to let people see, that the MIPS port is still alive.

> be neat.  To hell with X when you have aalib.

:-) As I only speeded up scrolling time, it won't make any difference for
aalib. But sitting in front of a fast console you get the impression, that
the machine flys:-)

Thomas.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 11:52:53 +0200

> be neat.  To hell with X when you have aalib.

Is there MesaGL support for aalib ;-)

Actually aalib is already performing pretty nicely on the old console.
However the ``linux'' driver doesn't work right due to some console bug;
one has to use the slang driver.  So aa is more a test of the correctness
than the performance.

  Ralf

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 11:59:05 +0200

>From the next week on I'll spend allmost all my time again on Linux, so
if there it is possible to convince Linux to accept our patches, then we
can make it.

> aalib. But sitting in front of a fast console you get the impression, that

How true.  Also the old console is very buggy.  When using the driver for
the Linux console aa plain doesn't work.

(And who says one needs stinking X for c0o/_ D3m0z ;-)

  Ralf