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Steven, can you get xfbdev to work in BL3?


I ran Xsetup (by typing startx the first time).

It complained
Could not open default cursor font 'cursor'
which I could fix by copying over to /fonts/misc cursor.pcf.gz and
adding a line to fonts.dir,

or xfbdev -softcursor  (which I would need to add to startx, I think).

But all I got then was a two 800x600 screens of help, no hints as to what 
was missing.  It works in BL2 (which is set up for a standard X).

Your no-xvesa.tgz package has modified startx and fonts.dir, and 
cursor.pcf.gz (all of which I edited or added) and also XF86Config, which 
I don't think xfbdev uses.  Does it need rgb.txt?

It is compiled for libc5 (by David Moberg)
http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/xfbdev

I tried this on a desktop and on the Toshiba 100MHz laptop.

Apart from xfbdev, I have a 2-floppy linux modelled on yours
with framebuffer kernel, that boots from two differently named
img and tgz files (I edited rc) into 800x600 vesafb text mode
and puts me online (I need to update resolv.conf).

It was very complex to make the changes - mounted disk1.img loop, then 
disk1.gz inside that loop, removd and added things, unmounted, copied 
disk1f.gz to disk 1 with dd, ran lilo on it after editing your lilo.conf 
to add vga=788 after read-only, copied disk2f.tgz to disk 2 (and pointed 
rc at disk2f.tgz instead of disk2.tgz).  Copied the resulting disk1 back 
to an image file (with the lilo part added) as the new disk1f.img.

I removed all the mail programs (they don't work with my authenticating
server) and magicpoint and e3vi, and ne and ne2kpci, and replaced
Xvesa with xfbdev, edited startx to reflect that.

Added five pcmcia modules for network and wireless network cards.
Added the devices and cards to pcmcia config.

Added alias pico for e3pi and deleted e3vi
and edited issue.

Deleted the three cdrom modules since they are built-in.

I did not change the jwm menu (delete mgp and Xvesa modes and mail).

I got Disk1 to fit by juggling and keeping count.

Disk 2 has 130K free - mgp (180K) could be added back if I
removed the wireless modules.  Or 117K dbclient if it were
compiled for libc5.  Or cardctl to identify cards with.
Or iwconfig.

I have not tried wireless yet but framebuffer text at least works,
and it booted on the first try (except for needing to change rc
to recognize the renamed disk2).

Old Toshiba laptops are the best.  You can use floppy and cdrom drives at 
the same time, unlike DELL (which NEEDS xfbdev) and Hitachi (whose sound I 
still don't have working - opl3sax is not opl3sa2).  Newer Toshibas are 
not so good - we tried to fix two with notorious power supply (onboard) 
problems and one which set itself a password that can only be removed for 
$100 by the factory.  And the keys fall off.

Sindi Keesan