Re: Need accelerated 24 bit video - wsfb driver for Expert3D-lite not working

>> X -configure locks the Blade video & keyboard.  When run from ssh, shows
>> sunffb, wsfb, and wildcatfb drivers exist but says can't find any device.
>>
>> Only way to get X windows output is to manually create a xorg.conf with
>> the wildcatfb driver specified:
>> Section "Device"
>> Identifier "Expert3D-lite"
>> BusID   "PCI:0:1:0"
>> Driver "wildcatfb"
>> EndSection
>> (see below xorg.conf for full configuration)
>
> Yes, autoconfiguration for ifb(4) has been broken since
> the upgrade to xserver 1.7. I've meant to fix it several times but
> never actually managed to do it.
>
> Patches are welcome :)
>
>>
>> This leaves me with 8bit unaccelerated video output that is unusable as a
>> graphic workstation.
>
> This is also sad but true, and as far as I know there is little to no
> publically available documentation (and few developpers interested) to
> write a driver for the 3dlabs wildcat family.

I have a Sun Ultra 80 loaded (4x 450Mhz UltraSparc II, 4GB of RAM), it has an
Expert3D in it, so I am in the same boat, manually got 8-bit unaccelerated
graphics working, I would love to be able to actually have it run lite X stuff
(blackbox, etc.)

I have an interest in writing a driver for it. The only drawbacks are that I
don't have a lot of time, and I have never wrote a "real" driver, just a few
examples. I consider myself well versed in C, and I have tinkered with x86
assembly (never used SPARC assembly). I also live in the US, which I know may
be an issue for some areas of OpenBSD.

I have wanted to learn how to write drivers for a while, and I would like my
Ultra 80 to be more usable. Has anybody ever attempted this? Is it a
nightmare? Are the any hardware specs available? I can look into these
questions as well, I just wondered if anyone knows.

Regards,

Mike.