nanogui: Thread: dual video

Can anyone tell me what would be required to support dual videos (2 separate VGA controllers) using framebuffers and nanogui? I'm guessing that the screen driver simply opens a second framebuffer device (e.g., /dev/fb1) and everything else works the same as far as nanogui goes. I don't understand much about the framebuffer (actually I'm pretty ignorant of all this graphic stuff, but learning), so I'm not sure what is required within the kernel and drivers to support a second VGA.

Thanks,
Kyle Harris
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On Wed, 29 Sep 1999 22:11:52 -0400 you wrote:
>Can anyone tell me what would be required to support dual videos (2  
>separate VGA controllers) using framebuffers and nanogui? I'm guessing  
>that the screen driver simply opens a second framebuffer device (e.g.,  
>/dev/fb1) and everything else works the same as far as nanogui goes. I  
>don't understand much about the framebuffer (actually I'm pretty  
>ignorant of all this graphic stuff, but learning), so I'm not sure what  
>is required within the kernel and drivers to support a second VGA. 

I don't know how/if the framebuffer drivers handles it, but once there's
a GGI driver in NanoGUI (I've got a semi-working one somewhere...), you
can easily do multiheading and tiling, etc.

Vidar

On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Kyle Harris wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what would be required to support dual videos (2
> separate VGA controllers) using framebuffers and nanogui? I'm guessing
> that the screen driver simply opens a second framebuffer device (e.g.,
> /dev/fb1) and everything else works the same as far as nanogui goes. I
> don't understand much about the framebuffer (actually I'm pretty
> ignorant of all this graphic stuff, but learning), so I'm not sure what
> is required within the kernel and drivers to support a second VGA.

Do you mean having two NanoGUIs running, one on each graphics card? The
only real stumbling block there is lack of support in Linux for two
keyboards, though I think work is being done in this area. If you can make
do with only one keyboard (when you switch to the VT with the second
framebuffer on it, the keyboard focus switches to that display), then it
should simply be a matter of finding a combination of cards which works.
I'm told that the Matrox cards have the best support for multi-heading so
far. If on the other hand you mean one NanoGUI with multiple displays,
that would need a fair bit of work, though it would be an interesting
concept.

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