> The SPI port is brought out to a header. You forget that Timothy is allergic to header pins.
> An external board can plug into the header through a ribbon cable. The ASIC > can read a raw binary image of the registers that control video modes from > the external board at boot time. A wide variety of lab tools could be > devised that plug into the SPI header and do different things, What sort of lab tools? What sort of different things? So far only one method of setting the video mode without additional hardware has been suggested: jumper pins or switches on the OGC board. If additional hardware is required, this hardware should be useful for something besides setting the video mode. And if possible be something the user already has. A custom external board would be acceptable to a company making a lottery ticket kiosk, but not to most FOSS end users. And a company making a lottery ticket kiosk is likely to have a standalone prom burner anyway. For FOSS end users, realistic hardware they are likely to have includes a TV (if a way can be found for displaying 25x80 text), something with RS-232 (a variety of things including a dumb ascii terminal, a graphics terminal, an X terminal, another computer with native RS-232, another computer with USB and a USB-to-RS232 adapter, a Ethernet-to-RS232 printer/terminal/modem server box, a computer with a parallel port and a parallel-to-RS232 adapter, etc. etc.), a multisync monitor, another computer with an available PCI-X slot and a working console display. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
