[fpc-devel]Direct Memory Access and Iterrupts under Linux

[Matti Hamalainen]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2000 svtvn at bol.com.br wrote:

> Ok! I´ve look at svgalib sources but it´s very hard to understannd. I
> understand that it allocate a new virtual console with some system calls and
> access your memory area (I´m not sure, but I think is it). I´ve ask because
> when I´m configuring my sound card it ask what is DMA address, well, it´s
> part of Linux kernel. But other programs can´t acess DMA? I don´t know other
> whay to made a graph library (I made a graph library for DOS, it´s easy).

Yes, but remember that DOS <> Linux (or other Unixes)!! Under DOS you NEED
to make your own drivers, but under Linux you have the drivers already
provided (in some form). Direct access of hardware under Linux (or other
Unix) is NOT recommended and is sometimes impossible unless implemented
on the kernel level.

What I would recommend is that you use some (already mentioned) of the
available GENERIC libraries: GGI (http://www.ggi-project.org/) and/or
SDL (http://www.libsdl.org/)

Those libraries provide simple framebuffered videomemory access, where
you can easily draw (and implement functions for drawing things). They
support SVGALib & X11 and SDL also supports multiple platforms (Win32,
BeOS and MacOS)

Of course you can also use X11 or SVGALib directly.

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