A/UX 1.1.1 and Apple 4*8 video cards
Paul Campbell
paul at taniwha.UUCP
Sat Sep 15 02:03:40 AEST 1990
In article <2786 at sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> liam at cs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts) writes:
>The Apple 4*8 video card is apparently incompatible with A/UX 1.1.1, though
>it works quite happily with A/UX 2.0.
>
>Even with a 6.0.5 system in the Mac partition, A/UX 1.1.1 will not
>boot with the 4*8 video card: we have tried it in a Mac II and a Mac IIcx
>using a card populated for full 8-bit colour. In both cases A/UX gets to
>
> "run in circles, scream and shout"
>
>and then hangs. Putting an old Apple colour card in either machine works fine.
>
>Chatting to the UK A/UX support people, we concluded that the problem is probably
>that A/UX 1.1.1 implements Color QuickDraw (not the same thing as 32-Bit
>QuickDraw) and also loads the video card driver from the ROMs on the card.
>A/UX 2.0 implements 32-Bit QuickDraw so that works ok, and A/UX 1.0 didn't
>read the driver from the card so that might work....
All video cards that work with A/UX 1.0 or 1.1 must have a special A/UX code
resource in them (the one exception to this is that Apple 'toby' card
which is hard coded into the kernel). Since Apple has never had to write
one of these resources I wouldn't be suprised if the video card side of
the company was unaware of them and didn't put them in - most other
video companies became aware of this resource when A/UX customers started
beating up on them - I guess this process is just starting at Apple :-)
A/UX 2.0 uses the MacOS resource and doesn't bother with the special
A/UX resource which makes it (mostly - there are other gotchas) easier for
video cards to work under A/UX.
Paul
--
Paul Campbell UUCP: ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul AppleLink: CAMPBELL.P
What most people don't realize is that those plastic cover slips that your 3
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