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Xref: sserve comp.unix.sysv386:24258 comp.windows.x:45686 comp.os.linux:11225 comp.unix.bsd:5803 comp.os.mach:2224 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:21970 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware:32318 Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.windows.x,comp.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.mach,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!think.com!ames!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!hasty From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: Free software and the future of support for Diamond products Message-ID: <4m+p5fd.hasty@netcom.com> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 14:27:04 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) References: <7s0nqk-.hasty@netcom.com> <bill.717458450@chaos.cs.umn.edu> <t00nqa=.hasty@netcom.com> Keywords: Diamond, free-software Lines: 121 Hi, First off my apologies for not getting to some of you earlier. My primary reason was to acquire further information from S3 before sending my e-mail response. My end-goal is to acquire an affordable high end graphics svga which we can program and that the board can be purchased and supported. Ideally, the card should cost below $200 (US) mark. In dealing with both Diamond and Orchid, we have run into a stumbling block as far as the ability to set the dotted clock values in the S3 boards due to the use of custom clock synthetizers. Both Diamond and Orchid, so far are not releasing the information required to set the dotted clock values. In order to use the higher resolutions available with svga monitors and to increase the performance of graphics operations, the functionality to set the dotted clock values is required. When I first approach S3 on friday, they inform me that they would release the schematic diagrams for their 8C911. Today they claimed that they only release the information for the their DRAM version of the chipset. They promised they mail me the schematics and the neccessary information on the algorithm on how to initialize the S3 chipset, which also includes information on to set the dotted clock values for boards without clock synthetizers. The S3 set is a combination of an 8514/A and SVGA chipset. Basically, all the control functions needed to set the S3 are provided in the form of VGA registers. All enhanced graphics functions such as bitblt follow very closely the IBM 8514/A register convention. Under DOS and after initializing the board using INT10, I have been able to do biblt operations and line drawings using the enhanced register set using Orchid's Farenheit 1280 (S3 based svga card). The test code was taken right out of the "Graphics Programming for the 8514/A" by Jake Richter & Bud Smith, with some minor modifications to set the DAC registers and the ability to access the S3 enhanced chipsets. In vga land, you have to unlock the register set in order for read or write access. In terms of how may colors, depending on the DAC used it can support 24 bit colors, or 16 million colors. The new upcoming 928 is going to be about 2 to 3 times faster than the 8C911, far faster than the 8514/A. According to the customer-marketing person which I spoke, they believe that at this point the easiest road to achieve programmability and availability of an S3 card is to oem the board through a company. Artix located in Sunnyvale, California was recommended. I was not able to contact Artix today. The talks with Artix will begin tomorrow, and for sure I will buy a board from them as a test run. On the way of hardware engineer we have to wait for the package from S3 corporation to see what the actual contents are. I expect the package to be in around Wednesday. The actual cost of building an S3 8C911 is about $130-$150 (US) depending on value. The cost of including the AMI bios is about $25,0000. So provided that we do go ahead with the hardware project, it will help alot if someone could recommend, an alternative to the AMI BIOS. Also, there are no ASICs besides the S3 chipset that are required to build the S3 svga card. As for availability of a programmable S3 svga card, more on this tomorrow nite after I get to test the board. I will summarize my findings and e-mail them on Wednesday along with the information provided by S3. Why the S3? (1) The chipset is cheap, and vga boards are becoming available below the $250 mark. Also, it is supposed to be easy to implement an S3 vga card. To my knowledge there is no other acceptable solution at this time. There maybe others but they are either unproven technology or they will only release information on how to program the chipset under a non-disclosure agreement. (2) The S3 was designed with local bus in mind, and there are existing VESA local bus implementations as well as for other local bus implemantations. (3) Because the S3 command register set is based upon the 8514/a and svga register set, there is a wide choice of available literature. (4) S3 corportation provides a software development kit (5) Although limited, S3 allows access to their engineers and marketing. (6) With the 928 there is a future performance growth path. Even if I should obtained a reasonable S3 svga card, I feel that it is worthwhile for netters to have the ability to produce svga cards based on the S3 chipset. The reason is that as the ease of creating high-end graphics cards increases I strongly suspect that manufacturers will resort to idiosyncransies as a way to differentiate themselves. Thank you for support, Amancio Hasty