Re: boot banner project

Sam Lawrance wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 12:48 -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> 
>>/dev/null wrote:
>>
>>>Hello any & all,
>>> O.K. I feel I must preface this with an acknowledgment that I *know*
>>>this is a silly project *because* given the *incredibly* long uptimes
>>>that FreeBSD is known for. >>But<< for those *few* times when FreeBSDers
>>>see a boot screen, shouldn't it look really nice? Shouldn't also be able
>>>to reflect the Administrators tastes and personality? Well, this is the
>>>premise for my attempting this project. But before I start, I want to
>>>submit an RFC. So consider this an Request for comments. This is an
>>>attempt to create a Graphical boot screen that initially has the
>>>following layout:
>>>(a fixed width font required to view the layout correctly)
>>> --------------------------------------------------------
>>>|  some                                                  |
>>>|     sort                                               |
>>>|        of                                              |
>>>|    graphic       goes   in   this   area               |
>>>|--------------------------------------------------------
>>>|    boot                                                |
>>>|                                                        |
>>>|   messages                                             |
>>>|                                                        |
>>>|    seen                                                |
>>>|                                                        |
>>>|         here                                           |
>>>|   bla...                                               |
>>>|          bla...                                        |
>>>|                 bla...                                 |
>>>---------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>-Chris
>>
>>
>>Is it possible to do this without having to switch to an entirely
>>raster-based console?  Raster consoles (like what SuSE uses) have
>>been discussed in the past, and the common thinking is that the
>>loss in reliability and loss in speed is a significant issue to
>>consider.
> 
> 
> For a small, non-flashy banner, grab a stack of unused characters and
> draw a logo into them.  Much like what moused does to give us a nice
> pointer-shaped pointer rather than an ugly block.
> 
> It'll be 1-bit, but you can pick the foreground and background color in
> each block from a selection of the most popular console text colours
> ever :)
> 
> I think you could allocate the top two rows of text to this and get a
> nice effect without losing much.  And no raster, either.
> 
> 

ARGH!  Bad memories of the TI-99/4A!  Can we at least move up to
Atari800 video technology?

Scott