Date   : Sun, 03 Aug 2003 20:05:22 +0100
From   : "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <beeb@...>
Subject: Re: BeebEm Development

* Patrick Kaell (sparc@...) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > I am a little concerned though the the Unix version is lagging behind the
> > Windows one? I cannot remember who the Unix maintainer of this was, but I
> > am busy 'looking' at the code in ernest of improving it.
> 
> The UNIX version of BeebEm is unmaintained. The original author is Dave
> Gilbert who isn't currently doing any work on it. I did some
> modifications some while ago which can be found at:
> 
> http://www.kayoon.net/kaell/beebem

Thats great; I've updated my link to you to point to that.

> Dave Gilbert used code from a MPEG-1 player to draw the updates in a X
> window (bypassing the X protocol by using direct memory access).
> Unfortunately this code only works for X sessions with 8 bit depth
> visuals. Therefore I always start an X server with 8 bit depth visuals
> on another Linux virtual console. This is convenient for me (switching
> between BeebEm and my regular desktop session with the function keys).
> What do other people think of this? I have already tried to modify the
> code to work with 24 bit visuals, but this isn't easy... (My Xlib
> programming manual doesn't cover direct memory access).

The reason for it only doing 8 bit depths was not due to the origin of
the code but was that maintaining palettes without a
hardware palette is rather expensive, and back in the days of my P90
(now relegated to my firewall) it was cycles which were not needed and
anyway most people didn't run 24bit for their main displays.
My arc emulator does have support for true colour displays;
the X interface code for that can be found at:
  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/arcem/arcem/X/DispKbd.c?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain

> I try to find some time in the near future to do new modifications on
> the UNIX version and to release unpublished modifications...

Thanks for keeping it alive; its more than I've done to it for some
years!

Dave
 -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code -------   
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