*BSD News Article 13716


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From: dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (david.e.wexelblat)
Subject: Re: [Q] Xconfig for ATI Wonder V3?
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1993 17:06:56 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Mar30.170656.28858@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>
References: <paul.733385642@suite.sw.oz.au> <1993Mar29.185005.9512@exu.ericsson.se>
Lines: 49

In article <1993Mar29.185005.9512@exu.ericsson.se> lmcdefo@lmc.ericsson.se (Denis Fortin) writes:
> In article <paul.733385642@suite.sw.oz.au>, paul@suite.sw.oz.au (Paul Antoine) writes:
> |> I've read everything I could find on deriving Xconfigs, including
> |> readme's etc, but could find nothing that would work with my
> |> (admittedly old) ATI VGA Wonder card (it's the early V3 version).
> |> 
> |> Comments in the driver such as 'V3 board support needs a lot of work -
> |> I suspect it isn't worth it' lead me to believe that the support is
> |> shakey at best.
> 
> I haven't looked at the X386 for the past couple of years, but at the time
> I wanted to add in support for my ATI VGA Wonder card (it's one of the old
> V3 type).
> 
> I ordered the documentation for ATI, only to find out that in V3 you can't
> define different read and write addresses when you access pixels.  Therefore,
> you cannot blit from one place to the next: you need to read into RAM and
> then copy back into the video card at the new location.  This is a pain to
> do, and the preliminary X386 ATI support I had seen a couple of years ago
> very wisely (?!) avoided touching that.
> 

If that's the only problem, XFree86 now supports single-bank BitBlts (added
for the brain-dead Trident chipsets).  It does the horrible/nasty/ugly
scheme of slurp-into-a-buffer-then-spew-it-out.

What's really nuts is that the Trident 8900C supports two banks - but
the 1-bank code is 10% faster than the 2-bank code.  Go figure.

> I assumed that this is what is meant in the comments by "V3 board support
> needs a lot of work".
> 
> The point is a bit moot for me anyway, since my Unix machine only has 4MB
> of memory and X wouldn't run well with that little memory (the NT machine
> has 16 MB, but that's another story).
> 
> Good luck, and let me know if you find anything...
> --
> Denis Fortin, Principal consultant		fortin@zap.uniforum.qc.ca
> DMR Quebec Inc, +1 (514) 877-3301		lmcdefo@lmc.ericsson.se
> 	  Disclaimer: any opinions in this posting are my own.


--
David Wexelblat <dwex@mtgzfs3.att.com>  (908) 957-5871
AT&T Bell Laboratories, 200 Laurel Ave - 3F-428, Middletown, NJ  07748

"Love is like oxygen.  You get too much, you get too high.  Not enough and
 you're gonna die."  -- Sweet, Love Is Like Oxygen