Subject: Re: Diamond: Speedstar vs. Speedstar 24 vs Speedstar 24X From: Greg Wettstein <NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET> Date: Sunday, 25 Oct 1992 03:39:18 CDT
..... Major goof on my part, hit the wrong key, thats what I get for
posting at 0337..... :-)
Anway my only hope is that Diamond, although successful now, will be able to
have some of the painful experiences that DEC and IBM have had over their
proprietary way of thinking. I know it will cost them a bunch of cards at
our site.
I kick myself for not saving the posting that contained the programming
information for these VCO based cards. I was busy traveling, noticed when
I was in town for 36 hours that it was on the group, but found it expired
when I returned. I would give me eye teeth to be able to play around with
programming this card at boot-time to select the frequencies that I needed
for X. If anyone would entertain sending me a copy I would appreciate it.
My other real irritation is with the lack of programming savvy of the
Diamond boys. I can understand the rationale for using programmable dot
clock generators. It makes supporting different monitor types a somewhat
less painful experience for them. Their programming support is absolutely
DOS/real-mode centric. I wouldn't mind using their VMODE widget to set
the dot-clocks, especially since the setting seems to be persistent across
warm boots. But it is absolutely blind-stupidity to over-write clock
settings that are already there with new ones. It would be just as easy
to pick an open oscillator slot or even better allow the user to specify
which clock slot should get the setting. That way the X-crowd could get
their multiple clock settings, Diamond could keep their precious little
secret at at least people (like us) who got duped into these boards would
have some recourse for getting them to work as they should. Hopefully
their possession of 16 bit brains in a 32 bit world will be its own
reward....
Hopefully this information may be helpful to people who are tearing their
hair out trying to get these new Diamond PLUS cards to work. Best advice
to them is to boot up DOS, run the VMODE program to select mode 30H or
38H depending on whether you want 800x600 or 1024x768 and then have a look
at what Xfree reports for clock settings. At least 600x480 will work out
of the box.
The other thing for the Linux community to look at may be the VESA stuff
which was back in 0.96x. Linus took it out because of problems with some
some boards. It may be nice to incorporate this back as a compile-time
option which defaults to not being incorporated. As a couple of
individuals have reported selecting one of these VESA modes causes the
BIOS to select the proper dot-clock frequencies for that resolution. Ugly
hack which does not address the problem of only having two resolutions
available but probably less ugly than keeping a DOS diskette around.
Enough rambling, everybody by now is probably bored with this. Luckily
I get to turn the clock back one hour and head off to bed..... :-) Happy
Linux'ing to everyone.
As always,
Dr. G.W. Wettstein
Oncology Research Division Computing Facility
Fargo Clinic / MeritCare
UUCP: uunet!plains!wind!greg
INTERNET: greg%wind.uucp@plains.nodak.edu
Phone: 701-234-2833
`The truest mark of a man's wisdom is his ability to listen to other
men expound their wisdom.'