$NetBSD: README.FIRST,v 1.2 1994/10/27 04:18:45 cgd Exp $
================================================================================
| |
| P C V T - VT220 Terminal Emulation Driver |
| ------------------------------------------- |
| |
| for 386BSD 0.1, NetBSD >= 0.9 and FreeBSD >= 1.0 |
| |
| Release 3.00 March 1994 |
| |
================================================================================
Written by: Hellmuth Michaelis (hm@hcshh.hcs.de)
With much help from: Brian Dunford-Shore (brian@athe.wustl.edu)
Joerg Wunsch (joerg_wunsch@uriah.sax.de)
Thanks for beta-testing, bugfixes, code, keymaps and bugreports from:
Scott Turner (scotty@gagetalker.com)
Peter Galbavy (peter@wonderland.org)
Michael Havemester (tik@abqhh.hanse.de)
Gordon L. Burditt (gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org)
Bruce Evans (bde@runx.oz.au)
Heiko W. Rupp (hwr@pilhuhn.ka.sub.org)
Carsten Lutz (clu@malihh.hanse.de)
Christian Rohrmueller (internal@doitcr.doit.sub.org)
Andy Duplain (duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk)
Marko Karppinen (dreamer@purkki.apu.fi)
Onno van der Linden (vdlinden@fwi.uva.nl)
Dave Nelson (dcn@ignatz.acs.depaul.edu)
Mark Weaver (Mark_Weaver@brown.edu)
John Brezak (brezak@apollo.hp.com)
Jan-Oliver Neumann (jan@encap.hanse.de)
Kim Andersen (kim@dde.dk)
Michael Graff (explorer@iastate.edu)
Randy Terbush (randyt@cse.unl.edu)
Benjamin Lewis (blewis@vet.vet.purdue.edu)
Daniel Harris (daniel@reubio.apana.org.au)
Alistair G. Crooks (agc@uts.amdahl.com)
Szabolcs Szigeti (pink@bagira.fsz.bme.hu)
History (see also Doc/ChangeLog)
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Release Changes/Features
------- ----------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 Released as "pccons_vga" to alt.sources, VT100 emulation
2.00 VT220 emulation, many bugfixes and enhancements
2.10 Fixed bugs, monochrome environments, configuration changes
2.20 never released (experimental internal release)
3.00 Support for XFree86 >= 1.2, support for XFree86 2.0's
syscons/USL model for multiple X servers and/or terminal
sessions from Joerg Wunsch (Thank You, Joerg !!!), fixed
bugs, (n)curses-based EGA/VGA font editor, memory mapped
screens, full MDA/CGA virtual screen support, 132 columns
on some super VGA chipset's, support for NetBSD >= 0.9,
support for FreeBSD >= 1.0 and much more ....
Features
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- Almost full DEC VT220 Terminal functionality
- Full Support for MDA, CGA, EGA and VGA display adaptors
- configurable number of virtual screens on any video board
- completely independent virtual terminals for any video board
- (24), 25, 28, 40, or 50 lines for each virtual screen on VGA's
- (24), 25, 35, or 43 lines for each virtual screen on EGA's
- Fully remappable keyboard to support national keyboards
- All VT220 character sets plus ISO Latin-1 and DEC Technical supported
- VT220 downloadable character set supported when run on EGA/VGA
- VT220 user defined keys for each virtual terminal
- Optional function key label support a 'la Hewlett-Packard
- Display function codes functionality
- Optional screen-saving feature
- support for XFree86 >= 1.2 using the pccons model
- 132 column operation on:
o Tseng Labs ET3000 and ET4000
o Western Digital WD90C11
o Trident TVGA9000, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C
o Video 7 1024i
o S3 80C928 (board dependent)
o Cirrus Logic GD542x (board dependent)
- full multiple virtual screen / multiple X-server support
for XFree86 >= 2.0 using the USL-VT/syscons model
What it cannot:
- No double wide/high characters
- No softscroll
- No inverse background
- No VT220 printer output support
- No VT52/VT100 support at all
- No 8-bit controls
- Only limited AT-keyboard (84 keys) support
- Help you to make money ....
Tested Operating Systems
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386BSD 0.1 + patchkit 0.2.4 pcvt beta 16 tested
NetBSD 0.9 pcvt beta 14 tested
NetBSD-current pcvt beta 16 tested
-current as of February 5th 1994
(got a fix for Feb 12, see pcvt_drv.c,
search for NETBSD_CURRENT_12_02_94)
FreeBSD 1.0.2 pcvt beta 16 tested
FreeBSD-current pcvt beta 14 was tested against FreeBSD
-current as of late January 1994
(pcvt beta 16 was the last beta before the 3.00 release)
Installation / Upgrade
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R E A D (!!!) THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE Doc/INSTALLATION.xxxBSD FILES CAREFULLY !
Again: PLEASE R E A D T H E M !!!!! (Thank You!)
========================================
If you read them, you should have NO problems installing pcvt on your system,
if you don't read them, you'll probably run into problems ....
NOTE-1:
It is highly recommended in order to configure the driver into the system,
that you remove (and/or backup) your previous kernel compile directory and
do a fresh "config" with the new pcvt configuration. This has to be done
because the chain "config/make depend/make" obviously does not resolve ALL
dependencies!
NOTE-2:
You MUST copy or link the Util/Makefile.inc.X for your flavour of xxx(x)BSD
to Util/Makefile.inc . This is because FreeBSD handles manual pages
different than NetBSD and 386BSD 0.1. Also you have to edit Doc/Makefile
to make this changes for the pcvt(4) manpage.
Note-3:
The driver now (from 2.10 on) DEPENDS on the BIOS video display setting
stored in the RTC CMOS Ram - verify your configuration setting!
WYSIWYG - What You Share Is What You Get
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While beta-testing this driver, i learned that there are no two video boards
which are compatible. Same applies to the keyboard interface on motherboards.
We got this driver to compile and run on the majority of the tested machines,
but not on all. The configurations failing to run this driver were not very
exotic, but because i don't own all sorts of hardware, in many cases i could
only guess ....
PLEASE, if you fix bugs, add features, hack this driver to work on your
hardware or simply don't get it up and running, get in contact with me!
Help us to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again!
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The code is far from being perfect, YOU are very welcome to enhance it !
Please mail bug reports/fixes, suggestions, enhancements & diffs to
hm@hcshh.hcs.de
I will support this driver as my time permits it, feel free to contact me!
Have Fun !
Hellmuth
e-mail: hm@hcshh.hcs.de (...mcsun!unido!hcshh!hm)
s-mail: c/o HCS GmbH, Oldesloer Str. 97-99, 22457 Hamburg, Germany
tel: +49/40/55903-0 or +49/40/55903-170 (business)
fax: +49/40/5591486 (business)
tel: +49/40/384298 (private)
