Re: Graphic options for DS10L

I am using a DS15 with an ATI 7500 card, using the DVI with a DVI cable
to the DVI port of a Compaq 1825 display. I did nothing special.

HTH,

Bart Zorn

JF Mezei wrote:
Is there some "big picture" document that described how the OS interacts
with a graphics card ?

FredK mentioned that VMS for instance is likely to use 32 bits and use
the last 8 bits for special stuff like alpha value.

Does the OS really have any control over how the graphics card behaves,
or does the graphics card have a variety of options and the OS chooses
one or the other ?

Another example: From what I have read, VMS does not enable/support the
DVI output of the Radeon 7500. Wouldn't it be a simple case of VMS
depositing a couple of values in a register and making an interrupt so
that the graphics cards turns on the DVI port ?

Or would VMS truly have to provide data in a very different way to the
graphics card in order for the DVI output to ne enabled ?


And if VMS lacks the feature that enables the DVI port, is there
anything preventing a privileged user from accessing the graphics card
directly and making the interrupts/data transfer necessary to turn a
port on or off (DVI, or the composite video output) ?


On an old mac, I can dynamically change the screen size/resolution,
without impacting applications or having to reboot. On VMS, could this
be feasable ?

I assume one would have to access the graphics card to tell it to resize
the screen area, and somehow tell the X server to also resize the screen
area. Are there mechanisms to do that ?

When the X server starts up, I realise that it looks at a bunch of
symbols and logicals to set a lot of the parameters (as opposed to a
control panel on a MAC that does this dynamically). But could the code
that does that be called at times other than X server startup ?


Seems like graphic cards are voodoo magic happening behind the scenes. I
would liek a better understanding.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Graphic options for DS10L
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    ... Does the OS really have any control over how the graphics card behaves, ... From what I have read, VMS does not enable/support the ... DVI output of the Radeon 7500. ... X86 emulator in them in order to initialize the cards! ...
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  • Re: Graphic options for DS10L
    ... Does the OS really have any control over how the graphics card behaves, ... From what I have read, VMS does not enable/support the ... DVI output of the Radeon 7500. ... X86 emulator in them in order to initialize the cards! ...
    (comp.os.vms)