On Fri, 1 Sep 2000 22:35:56 +0200, Andreas Beck said:
> > I'm interested in working on drivers (is drivers the correct term?)
> Term is correct. You are probably confused by the term "target" - right ?
Actually, I'm familiar with those terms. :)
I associate the word "driver" with "downloadable binary that plugs into
your OS", and I wasn't sure how MSWindows-specific the term was.
Thanks. :)
> > In my experience, when someone asks me how to learn about something
> > like this (college students often ask me to "teach them to program"), I
> > tell them the only way to learn is by *doing* it.
> Yeah. I agree. So you want to do some HW driver programming ?
Yes, and having GGI run on my console isn't a bad side effect. :)
> If you have the docs, you are almost there. Good HW docs usually even
> contain example programming sequences.
I fear that there are no docs for these chips...
> > - A smaller (but related) project, that might be easier?
> Hmm - getting the River driver to work maybe ? :-)
River? Do you mean Riva? Or is this a project I'm not familiar with?
> Or, if there is some hardware you do know well (say a printer or an LCD
> panel), write a LibGGI target for it. A KgiCon driver is basically a
> translation layer between the LibGGI fbcon interface and the hardware.
> If you know how to write a target, writing a driver isn't far away.
A LibGGI target for a printer would be interesting...
Unfortunately, I don't have any extra devices like those.
> I don't have information on that one. However I found, that it _is_ pretty
> easy to analyze Windows drivers if you knwo enough about x86 assembly
> and have some decent disassembling tools.
Yikes. I imagine I *could* do that, but I'd prefer not reach that
point.
It's frustrating enough being forced to reboot when you mess up your
video card; being forced to boot between Windows/Linux regularly would
be painful.
Thank you for your offers of help. I'll glance at the XF source and
see if I understand any of it.
--
Evan Martin - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://students.washington.edu/eeyem
