Interactive X Window System Questions

Jim Frost madd at bu-cs.BU.EDU
Sat Sep 23 04:02:14 AEST 1989


In article <360 at twg-ap.UUCP> tucker at twg-ap.UUCP (Tim L. Tucker) writes:
|I have some product questions about Interactive's X11 software.
[...]
|o What hardware interface cards does it support (besides vanilla VGA) ?

Hercules, CGA, EGA, VGA, Pixelworks, Matrox, PGA, and some others.  It
supports a LOT of them.  If you need to know exactly, email and I'll
send you the list.  It even supports "super" VGA modes of many VGA
cards, up to 1024x768 (interlace mode).  I was impressed by the number
of video boards they support.

|  o Does it support VGA in color or just B&W ?

VGA in 1, 2, and 4 bit modes.  They don't support anything larger than
4-bits because it's "too slow" (according to the technical person I
was talking to).  The server is pretty fast on a VGA in 4-bit mode and
I guess with programmable cards it's even better.

|  o Does it support super VGA resolution (if so which cards) ?

See above.

|  o Does it support advanced graphics cards like the TI34010 TIGA boards ?
|    (i ask because Dell OEMs Interactive and demos X11 on their TIGA)

I don't think it supports the TIGA boards (I don't remember seeing
that in the installation) but it does support several boards (eg
Matrox, Pixelworks, PGA).  Again, email for specifics.

|o Does it follow the AT&T XWIN network interface standard for System V ?

Don't know that, sorry.  There is kernel support in it specifically
for X windows (/dev/xw) if that's useful information.

|o Must I buy the X11 development package or can I use the MIT library source ?

I'd buy it.  They have done some optimization that resulted in servers
which are much faster than the MIT ones; I used to use a Sun 386i with
the MIT server compiled with gcc, and it was *slow* (of course it was
full 8 bits, it would have been faster with only 4).  I'd grab the
source to the clients from the MIT release, though.

A note: xrdb requires /usr/lib/cpp which you won't have unless you
have the development package installed.  A simple fix is cp /bin/cat
/usr/lib/cpp (untried, but you get the idea).  This means that you
won't have the ability to #define things (like font names), of course.

jim frost
software tool & die
madd at std.com



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