Remember that, on the pc, you should always be able to revert to
monitor=vesa and indeed aux/vga attempts that if it can't recognise
your graphics controller, but it can fail if you're trying to use a
non-vesa resolution. It even works on multiprocessors now.
aux/vga -m vesa -p >/tmp/vesa
will generate a list of acceptable vesa modes, including resolutions,
in /tmp/vesa. The redirection is necessary to avoid interacting with
the vga subsystem while dumping it.
My long-term goal is to eliminate all the vga drivers but vgavesa,
which make up about 10% of the pc kernel port by line count. This may
not be possible due to currently-working graphics cards with broken
vesa bioses nor desirable because the native drivers are vastly faster
than the vesa driver (though I think we're closing that gap), but it's
worth attempting. I've used the vesa driver on my usual plan 9
terminals and it's hard to see a difference in performance compared
with the native vga drivers.
