*BSD News Article 9384


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!grebyn!daily!richk
From: richk@grebyn.com (Richard Krehbiel)
Subject: Re: S3 question - Amancio, are you there?
In-Reply-To: stripes@pix.com's message of Mon, 28 Dec 1992 03:33:47 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Dec29.053423.3829@grebyn.com>
Lines: 42
Sender: richk@grebyn.com (Richard Krehbiel)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
References: <VIXIE.92Dec26034105@cognition.pa.dec.com> <1992Dec27.081525.29228@netcom.com>
	<Bzy9wD.9Ez@pix.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 05:34:23 GMT

In article <Bzy9wD.9Ez@pix.com> stripes@pix.com (Josh Osborne) writes:

>   One problem with VESA LB and disk drives, (I think) VESA LB doesn't allow
>   bus mastering cards.  For SCSI (at least) this could be quite useful.  Of

Not correct; VL-bus does permit a card to become the bus master.

>   The 34020 docs are available from TI, I have a set somewhere.  The cross 
>   compiler is quite expensiave, and the old version makes poor code.  Someone
>   got a old gcc to work (more or less) with it.  The 34020 is fairly quick,
>   I would like to see a 34020 running X on it :-)  (I know it would be faster
>   to do most of the X stuff on the [34]86 and let the TI bang bits).

At work I have the Pittsburg Powercomputing X11R4 server running on an
Artist XJS 34020 card.  The card has 2M VRAM and 5M program RAM.  It's
the fastest thing going, period.  I wouldn't trade it for anything
else for running X on a PC; not an S3 928, not a Mach 32.

At home I have a Hercules Graphics Station, which is a 34010 card with
1M VRAM (shared with a VGA chip) and 2M program RAM.  I bought it
about a year and a half ago.  I have all the programming specs, but no
tools; no compiler, assembler, linker, loader, debugger, etc.
Nowadays I run OS/2, but there is no sign of OS/2 TIGA drivers, from
anyone.  I'll probably end up selling it - unless I write my own
drivers...

I've run MetroLink X11 on my Hercules card, and it's speed is
adequate, better than VGA, but nothing like my 34020 card.  MetroLink
is not asking much of the 34010 as far as I can tell; no more than
simple blits & such, stuff that an 8514 does better.  This card and
the MetroLink server can do 640x480 in 32K colors.

>   The GUI accel's are doing better then the 34020 cards because they
>   are cheap, however I think you can build a 34020 card as cheap as
>   a S3, but nobody has.

I seriously doubt you could make a 34020 card as cheap as an S3.   I
hope TI is working on something...

I would imagine that the fixed function accellerators are doing better
at Windows benchmarks because a Windows video driver doesn't have much
functionality to provide; not like an X server.
-- 
Richard Krehbiel                                 richk@grebyn.com
OS/2 2.0 will do for me until AmigaDOS for the 386 comes along...