Re: vax wscons setting questions

So, how many machines have you been running where wscons would even be 
an option?

Of all the VAXen I've been running, I guess I could possibly have used 
wscons on my 4000/90, once the graphics was somewhat working. But I've 
never used the graphics console. I've been using serial all the time. So 
definitely for me, wscons have never been even a topic.

   Johnny

On 2024-02-04 09:38, Anders Magnusson wrote:
> It may go back to something else I think.
> 
> I have never given a thought to the fact that I need to add new entries 
> in /dev for new devices, it has always been a natural thing to do, 
> wscons or not, but it might be that people expect a devfs to be present 
> these days.
> 
> -- Ragge
> 
> 
> Den 2024-02-04 kl. 01:33, skrev Johnny Billquist:
>> Well, I would argue that *very few* ever thought about using wscons on 
>> VAX. Most would have been using a serial console, or else the simple 
>> bit mapped console straight up.
>>
>> I certainly never even considered using wscons on VAXen. Although I 
>> have been running VAXen more or less continously for about 30 years.
>>
>>   Johnny
>>
>> On 2024-02-04 00:55, Mouse wrote:
>>>>>>> +    makedev wscons
>>>>>> i'm surprised it is 2024 and we're doing this.
>>>>> Doing what?  [...]
>>>
>>> [tsutsui@]
>>>
>>>> He also said "please do" so I assume it's obviously
>>>> "to add wscons target to the default MAKEDEV all op"
>>>
>>> Hm, that didn't seem obvious to me.  I read it as, to expand a little,
>>> "I'm surprised it's 2024 and we're still doing something this
>>> backward" (with the "please do" being something along the lines of
>>> "please do it, since that's how we still have to do it"). Perhaps I've
>>> just seen too many people say things like "I'm surprised it's [date]
>>> and [thing]" with meaning clearly (usually from additional text) of
>>> "how come we're so behind the times".
>>>
>>> But, in this case, as mrg@ clarified,
>>>
>>>> that it took until 2024 to have this patch proposed.
>>>
>>> so I clearly was misreading.  My apologies.
>>>
>>>> that means anyone who has been using wscons on vax has been manually
>>>> setting it up for a very long time....
>>>
>>> Has anyone?  I was under the impression - though formed mostly from
>>> absence of evidence, not evidence of absence - that vax has been mostly
>>> going unused ever since the broken compiler, the one that couldn't
>>> self-host, was dropped in.
>>>
>>> It also wouldn't surprise me if the few diehards who have been using it
>>> all this time have been upgrading existing installs, which for the
>>> first switch to wscons likely meant manual fixups and since then have
>>> been using existing /dev entries.
>>>
>>> Or have been using some other X, such as MIT X.  I sure know my few
>>> brushes with X.org on non-peecee hardware have hardly enamoured me of
>>> using it in cases where it's not actually needed (in my experience,
>>> such need is most commonly for hardware support reasons).
>>>
>>> /~\ The ASCII                  Mouse
>>> \ / Ribbon Campaign
>>>   X  Against HTML       [email protected]
>>> / \ Email!         7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
>>
> 

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: [email protected]             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol