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.TH VGA 3 

.SH NAME

vga \- VGA controller device

.SH SYNOPSIS

.nf

.B bind #v /dev

.B /dev/vgabios

.B /dev/vgactl

.B /dev/vgaovl

.B /dev/vgaovlctl

.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION

The VGA device allows configuration of a graphics controller

on a PC.

.B Vgactl

allows control over higher-level settings such as display height, width, depth,

controller and hardware-cursor type.

Along with the I/O-port registers

provided by

.IR arch (3),

it is used to implement configuration and setup of VGA controller cards.

This is usually performed by

.IR vga (8).

.PP

.B Vgabios

provides read-only access to the low 640kB of memory,

where the VGA and other BIOS ROMs are located.

.PP

Writing strings to 

.B vgactl

configures the VGA device.

The following are valid commands.

.TP

.BI size " X" x Y x "Z chan"

Set the size of the screen image to be

.I X 

pixels wide

and

.I Y 

pixels high.

Each pixel is 

.I Z 

bits as specified by 

.IR chan ,

whose format is described in

.IR image (6).

.TP

.BI actualsize " X" x Y

Set the physical size of the display to be

.I X

pixels wide by

.I Y 

pixels high.

This message is optional;

it is used to implement panning and to accommodate

displays that require the in-memory screen image

to have certain alignment properties.

For example, a 1400x1050 screen with a 1408x1050 in-memory image

will use 

.B "size 1408x1050

but

.BR "actualsize 1400x1050" .

.TP

.BI panning " mode"

Depending on whether

.I mode

is 

.B on

or

.BR off ,

enable or disable panning in a virtual screen.

If panning is on and the screen's

.B size

is larger than its

.BR actualsize ,

the displayed portion of the screen will pan to follow the mouse.

Setting the panning mode after the first attach of the

.B #i

driver has no effect.

.TP

.BI type " ctlr"

Set the type of VGA controller being used.

.I Ctlr

is one of 

.BR ark200pv ,

.BR clgd542x ,

.BR clgd546x ,

.BR ct65545 ,

.BR cyber938x ,

.BR hiqvideo ,

.BR mach64xx ,

.BR mga2164w ,

.BR neomagic ,

.BR nvidia ,

.BR s3 ,

and

.BR t2r4 .

.IP

Note that this list does not indicate the full set of VGA chips

supported. For example,

.B s3

includes the 86C801/5, 86C928, Vision864, and Vision964.

It is the job of

.IR vga (8)

to recognize which particular chip is being used and to initialize it

appropriately.

.TP

.BI hwgc " gc"

Set the type of hardware graphics cursor being used.

.I Gc

is one of

.BR ark200pvhwgc ,

.BR bt485hwgc ,

.BR clgd542xhwgc ,

.BR clgd546xhwgc ,

.BR ct65545hwgc ,

.BR cyber938xhwgc ,

.BR hiqvideohwgc ,

.BR mach64xxhwgc ,

.BR mga2164whwgc ,

.BR neomagichwgc ,

.BR nvidiahwgc ,

.BR rgb524hwgc ,

.BR s3hwgc ,

.BR t2r4hwgc ,

.BR tvp3020hwgc ,

and

.BR tvp3026hwgc .

A value of

.B off

disables the cursor.

There is no software cursor.

.TP

.BI palettedepth " d"

Set the number of bits of precision used by the 

VGA palette to 

.IR d ,

which must be either 

.B 6

or

.BR 8 .

.TP

.B blank

Blank the screen.

This consists of setting the hardware

color map to all black as well as, on some controllers, setting the

VGA hsync and vsync signals so as to turn off

VESA DPMS-compliant monitors.

The screen also blanks after 30 minutes of inactivity.

The screen can be unblanked by moving the mouse.

.TP

.BI blanktime " minutes"

Set the timeout before the

screen blanks; the default is 30 minutes.

If

.I minutes

is zero, blanking is disabled.

.TP

.BI hwaccel " mode"

Depending on whether

.I mode

is 

.B on

or

.BR off ,

enable or disable whether hardware acceleration

(currently for rectangle filling and moving)

used by the graphics engine.

The default setting is

.BR on .

.TP

.BI hwblank " mode"

Depending on whether

.I mode

is

.B on

or

.BR off ,

enable or disable the use of DPMS blanking

(see

.B blank

above).

.TP

.BI linear " size align"

Use a linear screen aperture of size

.I size

aligned on an

.IR align -byte

boundary.

.TP

.B drawinit

Initialize the graphics hardware.

This must be sent after setting the

.BR type .

.PP

Reading

.B vgactl

returns the current settings, one per line.

.PP

Some VGA cards support overlay graphics.

Writing strings to

.B vgaovlctl

configures such cards.

The following are valid overlay control commands:

.TP

.BI openctl

opens the overlay device.

.TP

.BI configure " w h format"

allocates resources inside the driver to support an overlay area

of width

.I w

and height

.I h

pixels.  Currently, the only supported

.I format

is

.B YUYV

packed.

In

.B YUYV

two pixels are encoded by their separate Y values

and their combined U and V values.

The size of the two pixels is 32 bits.

.TP

.BI enable " x y w h"

enables drawing data on the display through the overlay mode.  The data

is drawn at position

.IR x , y

and has a width and height of

.IR w , h

respectively.

.TP

.BI closectl

terminates overlay control.

.PP

Overlay data can be written to

.BR vgaovl .

.SH EXAMPLES

The following disables hardware acceleration.

.IP

.EX

echo hwaccel off > /dev/vgactl

.EE

.SH SOURCE

.B /sys/src/9/pc/devvga.c

.SH SEE ALSO

.IR arch (3),

.IR vga (8)

.SH BUGS

The hardware graphics cursor on the

.B et4000

does not work in 2x8-bit mode.