From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: public S3 design (Was: Free software and ... Diamond products)
Date: 8 Oct 92 19:42:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Oct8.194221.17716
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Oct7.080745.8931@gagetalker.com> scotty@gagetalker.com (Scott Turner) writes:
>In article <1992Oct4.154227.15530@netcom.com> hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty  
>Jr) writes:
>|> Is the above mentioned chipset the S3?
>Nope, the WD chip practically ate X primitives directly.
>
>|> Tnks Scotty for the info on the advantages of using the hardware cursor.
>|> 
>|> First off, I found an S3 svga card by Actix which I can set the dot 
>|> clock values. Actix's telephone number is 408-986-1625.
>|> You may also obtain the GraphicsEngine, the S3 card, from Palo
>|> Alto Computers. They are located in Palo Alto, Ca. I don't have 
>|> my dealers number. Palo Alto Computers sells the GraphicsEngine
>|> for less than $250, and if you obtain the card  from Actix they 
>|> will sell it for the list price of $300. All technical questions
>|> about the GraphicsEngine should go to Actix. 
>|> 
>|> The GraphicsEngine comes with 1 MB of VRAM and there is no
>|> S3 8C911 DRAM version.
>|> 
>|> Now on the X server side of things, I have modified an 8514/A
>|> X server to work with the S3 chipset. The server seems
>|> to work and it is fast. For instance moving a window around
>|> an releasing the mouse button, the server draws the window
>|> as soon as I release the button. The impression that I have 
>|> is that it feels faster than a Sun Workstation IPX!
>8514's are fast, I can still recall firing up the MetroLink server
>on my SVR4 system. It was almost as fast as my BLIT sserver. :)
>
>Unbanked access to the buffer is good stuff.
>
>On the good stuff topic, I've got a pair of motherboards here. They're
>both 50MHz 486 with local buss video. One is EISA and the other is ISA.
>The EISA vidspeeds at 12,400,000+bps to the ET4000 based local buss video
>card (they have a S3 card on the way.) And, it has the ET4000's linear
>address stuff hooked up!

The only problem that I see is how are you going to map 1MB of the vga
card to 1MB of physical memory? At least under 386bsd, this requires
kernel modifications.

>
>Only fly in the oinment is that 386bsd doesn't boot on the EISA MB.
>I'm about to try the ISA MB. If I can get this stuff to work I'll get an
>instant near 50% boost in performance on the XFree server. Then I should get
>another bit by throwing out the banking code.
>
>|> The major problem that I have is that the server seems to draw half
>|> of the characters. 
>Hmm, how half? You're drawing half the characters or drawing every other
>character?

My server uses the S3's Video RAM to cache fonts. The font cache works
with 8514/A under Linux. But under 386bsd and with the S3 chipset
it does not work, I do expect to solve the problem soon.

>
>|> The 8514/A X server was developed under Linux and the S3 X 
>|> server is being developed under 386bsd. The work to get the
>|> GraphicsEngine working started on Tuesday and on Saturday I was
>|> enjoying  graphics with a resolution of 1024x768 interlaced.
>|> I had previously modified the 8514/A server to work with the
>|> S3 chipset. The new work was related to initializing the 
>|> S3 properly,e.g., setting the dot clocks and the Horizontal and
>|> Vertical Timing values, etc.
>So this isn't the IBM 8514 driver? Is it hanging out on a anon-FTP
>site someplace? I have one of the local buss S3's on order (picture an

Be careful, make sure that  your S3 cards does not use
a programmable clock synthetizer like with the Diamond Stealth.
Known non-programmable clock synthetizer is Chrontel ch9204 series.
Currently, my S3 server works with Artix's GraphicEngine and 
Orchid Farenheit 1280, both use Chrontel ch9204 clock synthetizer.

Artix is located in Santa Clara and their cooperation in providing
timing information for their card was instrumental in getting
the S3 server up and running.

It has been a month and I still waiting to hear from Orchid. Maybe
they will call me back next year. I only deal with them for about 
3 weeks.


>S3 going mano-y-mano with a 50MHz 486, just a 74F244/74F245 between
>them, the pixels could fly...)
>

I expect to release my server next tuesday source, patches, and a binary
for the server. Just tring to get the font cache stuff...

>Scotty


Amancio Hasty