From: Emmanuel Marty <core@suntech.fr>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1998 13:40:34 +0000

Re: kgicon status update

Jon M. Taylor wrote:

[I did ]

> > GREAT ! Impressive pace, Jon :)
>
>         Thanks.  That is the way I program.  Unfortunately, when I slack
> off I *really* slack off, kind of an all-or-nothing situation.  Also, I am
> finding it quite enjoyable to actually be able to make decent progress -
> driver development can oten times be maddeningly slow.

Sounds like the way I usually code too ; either get a working driver
exactly two weeks after first getting the chipset docs and not knowing
anything about KGI internals ; or not write anything useful for two
months. Fortunately I'm in a "coding 24/7" period lately :)

> > Well, if you like, I can do some x86 optimization on the bottleneck that the
> > rendering of text in graphics mode is ; I did that for the mediaGX driver, and
> > while it's not nirvana, it went from hardly-usable (the original C routine :)
> > to really-usable. Less good-looking, but works well :)
>
>         Sure, that would be great.  I am using the stock fbcon text
> rendering routines, so that is probably where the pinch-point is.

Yup.. Geert mentioned that the sparclinux people did some major optimization
already, not sure if he meant it's already what you are using or not. I'll
check, and try to optimize where relevant. Hell, on a 7.09 mhz amiga,
text in graphical 1bpp mode was truly fast, not even using blitting (just
intelligent assembler programming :). On today's average-200 mhz machines,
even in 32bpp, it has to cut it.. :)

> > I've been coding for about ten hours straight every workday this
> > week, but saw no colors. Can you tell me how to see them? :)
>
>         In addition to not taking your eyes off the screen or getting up
> except to go to the bathroom, you must consume vast quantities of caffeine
> and very little food.

That's my days at work currently :) But I do take a 1-2 hours break for
lunch with cow-okers, maybe that's why I don't see the pretty colors.

> It also helps to have gone to bed at 4 AM the
> previous night (err morning) and to have gotten out of bed at 1:30 PM |->.

That sounds like my weekends four years ago before I got a job, girl,
flat etc :) I wish I could sleep in sometimes now. :)

> To me, a true hack-session is like the rituals that native Americans used
> to engage in, where they would isolate themselves and not eat or sleep for
> days until they saw visions of their ancestors or animal spirits....

Mmm, well actually I'm not too much of a hacker; I do like just coding and
coding till it works, and I just know that it will in the end, but I'm trying to
make it so that I don't have to rewrite a routine twice to be satisfied of it
anymore.. :)

Jon, it sounds like it's really time to prepare something in the CVS server
for us to be able to commit the modified drivers there, I don't feel like
collecting tarballs and diffs.. I was planning on porting the MGA driver
since that's what I have in my main box, but Jonas is working on it,
so I'll get my mediaGX driver to work asap .. Just prepare some room
in the CVS tree for your kgi-fbcon bridge and drivers :)

--
Emmanuel