Re: [MiNT] XaAES sources for FreeMiNT 1.16.3

[Peter Persson <pep.fishmoose@gmail.com>]

On 9 dec 2009, at 16.38, Johan Klockars wrote:

> IMO, it should never be possible for a user program/library to write
> directly to video memory. In the general case that may not even be
> physically possible.

In the general case, it is physically possible. At least it includes the Hades, Milan, CTPCI, Videl, SuperVidel, Shifter, TT-Shifter, FireEngine+Radeon, and - if I'm not misinformed - the ACP.

The original TOS has a low level video API (XBIOS). I see no good reason not to keep this approach. Maybe if there was a good alternative - but the VDI does not constitute that alternative. The lack of a good low level API effectively shuts out games and demos completely, which is unfortunate. Accessing video memory directly is something that people want to do. We can either accept that and make a good solution for it - or ignore it - and people will do it anyway, and we'll just end up with lots and lots of compatibility issues.

-- PeP