Re: [MiNT] question about socket calls

[Lonny Pursell <atari@bright.net>]

on 4/19/2005 2:21 PM, Maurits van de Kamp wrote:

> I was going to ask whether your VNC client was for X or GEM, but if it's a
> STiK client I'm guessing GEM. Too cool! :o)

Yes, a snap shot says it all perhaps:
http://www.bright.net/~gfabasic/temp/vnc.gif

Well the frame buffer alone will most likely keep it from working on most
machines. At a mere 640x480 it requires a 300kb buffer (for each pixel on
the remote 1 byte is required).  On top of that, to avoid any conversions on
the pixel data it also requires a 256 color video mode on the Atari.  Thus
it works only on systems with chunky video modes, as in clones with video
cards.  It might be possible to add planar conversions, but I got a feeling
that will impact the performance.  Won't know for sure until I try it
though.

Most people run resolutions well beyond 640x480 on there non-atari boxes.
The screen shot above shows my mac screen is bigger than 1280x1024.  A
woppping 1440x900.  Do the math on that and compute a frame buffer.  ;-))

I could avoid the frame buffer and request the blocks from the server on
redraws but that is terribly slow and causes a lot of network traffic, thus
the frame buffer is kept locally and redraws are extremely fast (vdi blits).
This also allows the CopyRect option to be used within the VNC protocol.

True color is even worse, 2 or 4 bytes per pixel.  Currently not supported.

> Wouldn't it be a good idea to use MiNTnet natively for this though? It will
> certainly be a lot faster and I don't think STiK users (you might still find
> them on some 1MB STs) will be likely to run VNC. And with native MiNTnet
> you'll know exactly where you are with regards to packet buffers etc.

I cannot make direct calls to the mint socket stuff directly from GFA, or I
would have.  The libraries are incompatible as GFA requires the original DRI
format libs.  I am not willing to switch to "C" at this time.   ;-)

-- 
Lonny Pursell    http://www.bright.net/~gfabasic/