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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

I have insmod'ed mdacon with a switch to make terminals (virtual consoles) 
1 and 2 appear on the TTL monitor (with Hercules mda/mga card) and 
remaining terminals (3, and for BL2 also 4) on VGA monitor with VGA card.
I have on this computer a Tseng VESA 2.0 2MB ET4000 (6000?) card, pci.  It 
is my only VESA 2.0 card.


I modified BL2 RAMdisk version so it would use mdacon.  When I boot from 
either the TTL or the VGA  monitor, I get terminals 1 and 2 displaying on 
the TTL and 3 on the VGA.

I added the mdacon line to rc in BL3 and it also works as above, run with 
loop (not hard disk or floppy versions).  This is the BL3 version before 
the presentation software was added.

But in BL2 on hard disk something is different and it does not work 
properly.  If I boot linux from the TTL monitor I get consoles 1-4 
displaying on the TTL mointor.  If I boot it from the VGA monitor I get 3 
and 4 displaying properly in VGA, but 1 and 2 on the TTL in scrambled 
(unreadable) format - wide diagonal patchy stripes that move (individual 
pixels vary).  

I am sure I was running BL2 on hard disk on a 2-monitor system before, and 
it worked properly.  I had a VLB video card or an ISA video card in one 
system.  I will check other pci cards.  I have one other Tseng VESA 2.0 
pci (1MB RAM).  

But what would make BL2 hard disk behave differently as regards the 
display from BL2 RAMdisk or BL3 hard disk?  mdacon is for kernel 2.2.16 in 
all cases.  

I recall file names displaying in color in BL2 Ramdisk but not hard disk 
(but I forget what file to modify to change this).

Are there any other changes to anything related to the video that I could 
experiment with?

This is supposed to be my main office computer and I was really looking 
forward to using it with two monitors.  The other office computer does not 
have enough ISA slots to put in an HGC card (and modem and sound card, and 
I have sound working on it with Win98).  Another computer won't even work 
at all with HGC cards.  The others are unreliable as regards linux.  

HGC works perfectly in DOS on this computer and I can switch back and 
forth TTL/VGA.  mode co80 mode mono.  Is there any similar switch for 
linux instead of mdacon?