Re: atafb and X/fbdev

[Michael Schmitz <schmitzmic@gmail.com>]

Thorsten,
>> Have you tried the VGA modes (vga256 for instance)? That might boil down to
>> interleaved planes in the end though.
>>     
>
> Yes, vgs256 was interleaved too. From my limited understanding of
> atafb.c all modes are interleaved or monochrome.
>   

That's the way the Falcon VIDEL is wired up then.

>> You will have to go back to one of the earlier Debian releases (slink or
>> potato) for Atari support in the X server. potato should still have the
>> required code.
>>     
>
> Hrm, okay. I couldn’t find much in the ’net except a reference to
> xfree68 but was unable to find that, either. Too bad, all the history…
>   

Seaching for "xfree86 fbdev server m68k" does refresh my memory a bit -
the server package was called xserver-fbdev and you will find a sample 
config
file at http://people.debian.org/~cts/debian-m68k/slink/XF86Config - 
Christian is
away overseas ATM or else he might be able to give a few hints here.

The entry

    Driver      "FBDev"


in the 'Screen' section is what directs xfree86 to use the generic frame 
buffer server.
> you don’t happen to know the _package_ name of the server, and the
> needed config? ;-)
>
>   

See above - it's xserver-fbdev, IIRC version 3.3.6 was the last to work. 
Also take a look at 
http://people.debian.org/~cts/debian-m68k/slink/debian-m68k-faq
for a few likely X troubleshooting hints.

Blast from the past really - I never had much fun running X on my 
(unaccelerated) Falcon
mainly because the system became really unstable at high resolution or 
color depth.
Waiting for 10 minutes while the X server starts up was a bit annoying, 
too.

Are you trying to get the old X server running in ARAnyM, or 'just' port 
the interleaved bit
planes code to current Xorg? If it's questions on the framebuffer memory 
layout and the VIDEL
that you need answered, Andreas and Petr might be better suited here. 
Regarding building
xfree from source - that's memories well suppressed which do not bear 
recalling.

Cheers,

  Michael