From: dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (david.e.wexelblat) Subject: Re: [Q] Xconfig for ATI Wonder V3? Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1993 17:06:56 GMT
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.