[RndTbl] Linux distro for Pentium III

[Hartmut W Sager]

Ah, thanks for the clarification.  You're right about what I was thinking
of.  That's the trouble with having been around "back then".  :)

Although I did know that VESA was/is also an association, I didn't know of
anything they had done since the VESA LocalBus days, especially not that
all-important mounting hole spacing on the back of LCD's.  Being able to
flip resolutions with generic (VESA) "commands"/register-pokes/whatever is
a great idea.

Hartmut Sager



On 8 October 2013 09:36, Adam Thompson <athompso at athompso.net> wrote:

>  On 13-10-07 10:08 PM, Hartmut W Sager wrote:
>
>  VESA???  I think VESA is from the 80386/80486 era, and that even Pentium
> 1 (desktop) computers started adopting the PCI bus for several reasons,
> including the replacement of the short-sighted VESA bus.  So, a Pentium 3
> should heavily post-date VESA.  Roundtable mailing list
> Roundtable at muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
>
> Yes and no.
>
> You're thinking of the VESA LocalBus slot, which was short-sighted only in
> the sense that it was designed by a bunch of video card mfgrs to make their
> products look good - it did exactly what it was supposed to, and it was
> cheap enough that m/b mfgrs (mostly) just implemented it without putting up
> a fight.
>
> However, VESA, the association, continues to define standards for
> video-related things today.  Some of the most important bits are the
> spacing of the mounting holes on the back of LCDs (yes, seriously), and a
> common definition of how to set video cards into a certain resolution with
> a linear, non-accelerated, frame buffer mapped to a certain address
> space... this latter piece is what the X "VESA" driver supports, a
> lowest-common-denominator mode so that you can at least set the resolution
> correctly on pretty much any video card today.
>
> -Adam
>
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