Support for MS Virtual PC 2007

"Tarpai A." <[email protected]> Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:08:50 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.comp.xfree86.devel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi XFree86 Developers!

First of all let me express all my respect for the tremendous work you guys 
put into XFree86!

I'm developing native for PC hardware now using MS Virtual PC 2007, and I 
needed true-color high resolutions. I've managed to set 8-, 16 and 32-bit 
screen modes in *any* arbitrary resolution under VPC by programming the 
video 'registers'. I don't use Linux and/or XFree, but I can see that many 
XFree users has problems setting up VPC and XFree.

I was thinking to ask this community whether it might be interesting to give 
dedicated support for VPC! Having shortage of time I cannot patch XFree, it 
was a long time ago that I read the source code, but with a little help by 
people who know exactly where to insert my SetScreenMode() routine this 
might go relatively fast.

I was interested only in the so called 'enhanced' modes, beyong standard VGA 
(I think VPC emulates VGA functions very well). I've booted VPC with my 
serial-communication program and poked registers for a few days.. Being 
software emulation there are a lot of differences compare to a real S3 
Trio64. Most of the registers are useless, and only some of them matter. It 
turned out that VPC requires 3 lines of S3 init code for enhanced modes, and 
a short SetScreenMode() function that supports 8-, 16- and 32 bpp color 
depths at any resolution, of those of course which fit the emulated 4MB 
linear frame buffer at 0xF8000000.

I would gladly contribute to XFree development, if VPC support has any of 
interest! Some shots and details can be found on my page: 
www.halicery.com/vpc.htm. Code might look messy, sorry about that..

Identification hint: S3 in VPC reports different pci_ids in PCI config space 
(0x8811) and in extended CR registers 2D-2E (0x8810). Maybe this is enough 
to identify VPC??

Seems like to me that VPC fully supports Trio64's 2D acceleration. I just 
have doubts whether to use it or not, being software emulation anyway.. Can 
be comfortable but with performance issues. That should be benchmarked 
first.


Best Regards,
Attila Tarpai

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