Re: Graphics on Atari?

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On torstai 31 tammikuu 2013, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> I tried the X server from potato or something like that, and while
> I could get it to install, I didn’t have a Modeline to use, so that
> didn’t work. That x.org thingy uses an fbdev driver which doesn’t,
> according to the porters, support the planes in the framebuffer for
> the various Atari resolutions. (And I tried tham all.)

W Window system supports 1, 2, and 4 bit-plane planar (and 8-bit chunky)
modes and can works on top of a Linux framebuffer:
	http://koti.mbnet.fi/tammat/open.shtml#wws

It's a long time since I've tried it on Atari (MiNT), but few years ago
I updated it to work x86 Debian Stable and added Debian packaging for it.

The package might build and work as-is on also on m68k Debian (it's
fast to build; small, uses plain makefiles and C), but probably one
needs to tweak it a bit.

If somebody tries it, I would be interested.  And if you think it's
still useful, I can fix problems in it.

(I wouldn't configure it so that it opens port to network though,
it's very naive and doesn't provide any of the X security features,
even session cookie.)


> Thomas Goirand suggested there was one linear framebuffer mode on
> the Atari, but I couldn’t find that in the kernel (atafb).

That would be monochrome...  For that you need (e.g. emulated)
monochrome monitor.


> Using a VNC server and then connecting to it from some other
> machine however works and can even run KDE 4.8 in a somewhat
> acceptable speed (depending on the RAM (~300M) and speed of
> the machine).


	- Eero