The answer to my question is in the FAQ:
7.5 - How do I use a console resolution of 80x50?
I don't know how I missed that. On the other hand, the example given doesn't seem to work in my environment. With this:
Code:
wsfontload -h 8 -e ibm /usr/share/misc/pcvtfonts/vt220l.808
wsconscfg -dF 5
wsconscfg -t 80x50 5
Everything seems to go well enough until I switch to screen 5 (ttyC5) with
[CTRL]+[ALT]+[F6]. The resolution appears to still be 80x25 but now only the top half of the characters are displayed. This happens on a machine with a "ATI Rage XL" graphics device (
dmesg). I tried this again on a machine with a "NVIDIA GeForce 6100 nForce 430" graphics device (
dmesg) and it worked as expected.
The FAQ does say: "
Note: this will not work on all video cards. Unfortunately, not all video cards support the uploaded fonts that
wscons(4) requires to achieve the 80x50 text mode."
Hmm, I wonder if the FreeBSD
syscons(4) fonts will work with OpenBSD
wscons(4) and the ATI Rage XL video device?