Doug Yowza wrote:
>
> On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
>
> > MGR continues to be popular on surviving AT&T 3B1 and 7300 Unix PCs.
> > Took a small hardware mod to run it, but it's been stable for years.
> > Since the Unix PC can't be upgraded to enough RAM to make X useable.
>
> OK, I'll bite. What kind of hardware mod could MGR possibly require?
>
> BTW, there's a nice little pro-X rant that covers some X alternatives:
> http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/xbloat.html
To quote section 2.5 of the 3B1 FAQ:
|> MGR is an alternative windowing environment developed by Steve
|> Uhler at Bellcore and ported to the UNIX PC by Brad Bosch and Brian
|> Botton. The MGR windowing environment can replace the standard
|> /dev/window environment on the UNIX PC quite nicely (it does prevent
|> some UNIX PC specific programs from being run since the wind.o
|> loadable device driver is not loaded). MGR's user interface is quite
|> similar to a SunWindows environment, and raster operations are quite
|> fast. MGR is a user program, not a driver (besides the pty driver),
|> so it doesn't take up precious kernel space. It does require a
|> hardware modification called the VIDPAL. The VIDPAL (developed by
|> Brian Botton [...!att!iexist!botton]) is a daughterboard that sits
|> sandwiched between the 68010 CPU and the motherboard and allows direct
|> access to video memory from a user process.
|>
|> At one time, Brian had provided VIDPAL kits but no longer does
|> so. If you want to try out MGR, but can't get a VIDPAL board, you may
|> want to try out John Milton's VIDPAL emulator -- a software-only
|> solution to video memory access. It is certainly slower than a real
|> VIDPAL, but is interesting none the less. The VIDPAL emulator was
|> posted to comp.sources.3b1 and so should be archived at standard
|> archive sites like uunet.uu.net.
I was somehow thinking about another mod for the Unix PC, it's been
so many years since I installed it I forgot about the VIDPAL kit. I
have it in one of my machines. I thought there was a schematic
available, but I was obviously thinking of the ICUS hard disk upgrade.
(By the way, anybody scrapping old XT-type HD controllers check first
to see if the main chip is a WD2010 -- there are folks on comp.sys.3b1
desperate for them!)
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Received on Thu Dec 17 1998 - 23:56:43 GMT