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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!hasty From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: local bus video? Message-ID: <hastyCDB1G5.Czo@netcom.com> Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) References: <jstCDApw0.4E8@netcom.com> <2727j1$8o9@pdq.coe.montana.edu> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:16:52 GMT Lines: 62 In article <2727j1$8o9@pdq.coe.montana.edu> osyjm@cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) writes: >In article <jstCDApw0.4E8@netcom.com>, Jason Thomasser <jst@netcom.com> wrote: >> >> >>Greetings- >> >>Does NetBSD/FreeBSD support local bus video? Also on the subject of > >Sure. I mean, you don't have to do anything super special to make it >work, just stuff it in there and go crazy.l > >>video, Amancio Hasty has posted he really likes the Actix Ultra >>(they have S3928 chipset). Is this the same as ATI? If so will > XS3 has been tested with #9's S3 928 VLB to deliver the fastest xstones in the PD, 118k xstones with David Greeman's 486DX66. The current release of XS3 also supports 1280x resolution. >I don't think so, ATI has their own chipset. ATI uses the mach32 their own design. > >>the ATI local bus cards work and are they advisable? I guess I may >>as well ask, why would local bus be an advantage? > Local Bus cards for graphics co-processor systems don't increase performance that much. Mostly because we send high level graphics commands to the card. In the case of the S3 928, the graphic's io ports are memory mapped so they take even less time to be deliver to the card. Where local bus cards should shine is in reading/writing images to a card. To help out those on deciding which cards to buy: The S3 928 cards ISA or VLB are faster than the the S3 801 or 805. Under 386bsd the S3 805 does not perform to its full potential due to problems with Linear Mode (vga banking) in short we don't use because we can't map video address in the range of 0x7c000000. So we resort to reading/writing pixels for image/read/fill using a slow data transfer register. Hope this help, Amancio -- This message brought to you by the letters X and S and the number 3 Amancio Hasty | Home: (415) 495-3046 | ftp-site depository of all my work: e-mail hasty@netcom.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/incoming