Dieter wrote:
At least nothing complex. If we had a simple RISC processor design
that was worth-while to put into an FPGA, we could do someone's X
server-on-a-card idea. In fact, we've got everything we need for a
powerful terminal. We can hook up serial, USB, ethernet, keyboard,
and mouse to the I/O bus on OGD1. We can put a CPU with basic video
logic into the FPGA. The CPU can have a few special instructions to
speed up some drawing operations, but most of the drawing would come
from regular general-purpose code plus perhaps a
bitblt-offload-engine.
[responding to T. Miller, quoted above]
People in the embedded world recreate their own version of the above
solution every year. Highly unoriginal. Lurk on linuxdevices.com or
opencores.org.
OpenCores has: serial, USB, ethernet, keyboard, mouse, and a hackable
RISC processor (already has a few graphics-centric instructions/modules).
Okay, I'm confused.
Why is the above X11 server not complex but my audio/video server box
idea complex?
Is there a significant difference in complexity between an X11 server
and a television server? I was thinking the same server could do both.
Pretty much.
Television is more difficult than CRT, IMO, so an embedded X11 solution
would be easier than TV, I feel.
I'm not sure where we'd store the X server and basic OS kernel,
though. I suppose we could put a monitor/dumb terminal program in the
PROM that could accept an OS image upload/download from somewhere else
over the network.
The X terminals I'm familiar with have either a small amount of PROM
with bootstrap, diags, ping, download-the-X11-server, and human interface,
or a larger amount of PROM with that plus the X11-server. Having the
Yep.
Or do something crazy, like put a tftp client in FPGA. Its been done...
X11 server in PROM is very nice, it allows using the X terminal as a
RS-232 console for headless computers without a catch-22 of needing the
computer to be up to serve the X-server code to the X terminal and needing
the X terminal up to see why the computer will not boot. If you have a
problem booting the computer, you can use X's cut-and-paste to capture
the messages.
In the South, we call this "going around your elbow to get to your
thumb." Anyone who needs an RS-232 console isn't going to bother with
this, there are tons of existing solutions on the market.
Even better are the "ethernet console" devices, which translate
video/mouse/keyboard signals into packets sent over a network to the
remote administrator's console.
The thing is, companies have tried over and over to sell stand-alone X
terminals, and they never had much success.
Yep.
I think NCD (and perhaps others?) was doing okay for awhile, then people
decided they wanted a virus server box sitting on their desk.
I think X terminals are great. Small and quiet. I don't want a big
noisy box in my office. I don't want a big noisy box in my living room.
The modern X terminal is called a "web terminal." Easily done with a
CPU, flash, and video controller. All the pieces are already at
opencores.org, even.
Jeff
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