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.TH svgalib.mach32 7 "1 August 1997" "Svgalib (>= 1.2.11)" "Svgalib User Manual"
.SH NAME
svgalib.mach32 \- Information on the Mach32 chipset driver
.SH TABLE OF CONTENTS
.BR " 0. " "Introduction"
.br
.BR " 1. " "Specifying pixel clocks"
.br
.BR " 2. " "Copyrights"
.br
.BR " 3. " "The mach32info utility"
.br
.BR " 4. " "Third party cards"
.br
.BR " 5. " "Logical linewidth"
.br
.BR " 6. " "Noisy video signals"
.br
.BR " 7. " "The configuration EEPROM"
.br
.BR " 8. " "EEPROM woes"
.br
.BR " 9. " "The Mach32Eeprom command"
.br
.BR "10. " "Setup of the memory aperture (linear framebuffer)"
.br
.BR "11. " "Accelerator support and other weird features"
.br
.BR "12. " "Ramdacs"
.br
.BR "13. " "Meaning of the detection message from svgalib"
.br
.BR "14. " "Conclusions"
.SH 0. INTRODUCTION
The driver should allow you to use any of the graph-modes
your Mach32 card supports. Note that there is no support for
<8bpp modes and that I won't ever implement that because I don't see
any reason for doing so. All standard VGA-modes are supported, of course
(by using the standard VGA driver routines).
If you configured your Mach32 for a memory aperture and it is
at least as big as the memory of your card (that is, not a 1MB
memory aperture for a 2MB card) support for linear frame buffer
access of svgalib is given.
Auto detection of the Mach32 seems not to work on all cards. That's
really strange since I got the code from the X people. It should be OK
regardless of my docs. Well, I fixed that (hopefully). Actually
the bug was found by Daniel Lee Jackson (djackson@ichips.intel.com).
(Thanks again.. It was so silly... I would have never found it)
If you still have problems just put a chipset Mach32 in your config file.
.SH 1. SPECIFYING PIXEL CLOCKS
.B WARNING!
The Mach32 driver needs to know correct clock frequencies for graceful
DAC configuration. Wrong clocks may damage your card! However, this version
contains code for automatic clock detection. Since clock detection is time
critical, please do it on a completely idle system. Then put the printed
out
.B clocks
line in your
.BR libvga.config (5)
file.
The driver tries to do this for you.
After that, you can restart whatever svgalib program you used and you are
set. If you already put a
.B clocks
line in your config by hand, comment it
out to have the driver check your clocks.
Since clock probing is time critical, values differ from time to time, you
may try it multiple times and see which values seem to be most exact. You
can also compare them with the standard clock chips for Mach32 cards in
.BR libvga.config (5)).
The clock probing relies on the 7th clock being 44.9MHz as this is what Xfree does.
If this is not true (and it is not always), probing is hosed. See
.BR libvga.config (5)
for a list of the
.B clocks
used by common svgalib cards.
.SH 2. COPYRIGHTS
Some tiny routines are copied from Xfree86. The clock detection code is almost
just copied. So I repeat the copyright statements for these parts here:
Copyright 1992 by Orest Zborowski <obz@Kodak.com>
.br
Copyright 1993 by David Wexelblat <dwex@goblin.org>
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that the names of Orest Zborowski and David Wexelblat
not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of
the software without specific, written prior permission. Orest Zborowski
and David Wexelblat make no representations about the suitability of this
software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or
implied warranty.
.B Orest Zborowski and David Wexelblat disclaim all warranties with regard
.B to this software, including all implied warranties of merchantability and
.B fitness, in no event shall Orest Zborowski or David Wexelblat be liable
.B for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages
.B whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an
.B action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of
.B or in connection with the use or performance of this software.
Copyright 1990,91 by Thomas Roell, Dinkelscherben, Germany.
.br
Copyright 1993 by Kevin E. Martin, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that the name of Thomas Roell not be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without
specific, written prior permission. Thomas Roell makes no representations
about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided
"as is" without express or implied warranty.
.B Thomas Roell, Kevin E. Martin, and Rickard E. Faith disclaim all
.B warranties with regard to this software, including all implied
.B warranties of merchantability and fitness, in no event shall the authors
.B be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any
.B damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether
.B in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising
.B out of or in connection with the use or performance of this software.
Author: Thomas Roell, roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
Rewritten for the 8514/A by Kevin E. Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu)
.br
Modified for the Mach-8 by Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.br
Rewritten for the Mach32 by Kevin E. Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu)
And here is my own copyright:
This driver is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it without any restrictions. This library is distributed
in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty.
Copyright 1994 by Michael Weller
Email addresses as of this writing:
eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de mat42b@spi.power.uni-essen.de
.B Michael Weller disclaims all warranties with regard
.B to this software, including all implied warranties of merchantability and
.B fitness, in no event shall Michael Weller be liable
.B for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages
.B whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an
.B action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of
.B or in connection with the use or performance of this software.
.SH 3. THE MACH32INFO UTILITY
The
.BR mach32info (6)
utility or demo reads out all configuration registers and the configuration
EEPROM of your Mach32 card. If
there is a problem with the particular card you have, compile
and run the utility in the
.I mach32/
directory of the svgalib distribution and send it's stdout to me
This might also be useful if you need a lot of options (e.g. clocks on new models?) to
get it to work so that this can be done automatically in future versions.
.SH 4. THIRD PARTY CARDS
I got a few reports about AST systems with onboard Mach32.
They do feature an incompatible EEPROM setup, but I think I got around
that. Nevertheless the Mach32 chipset driver doesn't work out of the box
on any AST system I heard of.
Since original ATI Mach32 demos and tools don't work as well, I've to claim
that the Mach32 on these AST systems does not conform to ATI's Mach32 docs.
Fortunately, Vernon C. Hoxie <vern@zebra.alphacdc.com> found a work around
after years (really!) of investigating. AST Mach32 seems to work now. The work around was
also submitted to Xfree and will be incorporated to allow running it on the
AST hardware too in recent versions. Please read on the
.B misc_ctl
command below.
Dell users should have a look at the
.BR "vendor" ", " ramdac ", and " svgaclocks
commands below (if they have problems with the default settings).
.SS Commands to support third party cards
I had to learn that those cards seem
to use not only non standard clocks for the Mach32, but also for the included
SVGA. However, since people often like to use proprietary, non standard VGA
(read 80x25) textmodes, the Mach32 driver has to set the included SVGA to
a VGA compatible clock frequency. Otherwise svgalib has problems using plain VGA
modes. This screws VGA modes up if these clocks have different values on third
party Mach32 cards.
.TP
.BI "svgaclocks " n
with
.I n
a number between
.BR 0 " and " 31
to select the svga clocks to be used in vga
modes. The bits of
.I n
refer to specific ATI register bits to complicated to
explain here. Even if I would, I can't tell which clocks they would select
on your third party card (which is the actual problem)
.B svgaclocks 9
is the default setting and correct for original ATI cards.
Often
.B svgaclocks 0
(Dell cards) works.
.TP
.B svgaclocks keep
is special in that the
driver will not touch any SVGA timings. This requires the Mach32 SVGA part to
be in a VGA compatible mode when the svgalib application is started, that is,
you must use 80x25 (maybe 80x50) console textmodes.
.PP
As I mentioned already,
Vernon C. Hoxie <vern@zebra.alphacdc.com> really seems to have located the reason
for the Mach32 AST problems. Any access to
.B MISC_CTL
locks up the card & system. Fortunately
.B MISC_CTL
is only used for some DAC fine tuning (actually the setting you can
fine tune with the
.B blank
command) which is only of barely noticable effect to the screen.
The following configuration commands exist to support AST cards:
.TP
.B misc_ctl keep-off
Do not dare to touch MISC_CTL.
.TP
.B misc_ctl use
Use it for fine tuning of the Ramdac setup (default).
.PP
Finally, for your convenience there exist:
.PD 0
.TP
.B vendor ati
.TP
.B vendor dell
.TP
.B vendor ast
.PD
These are macros that expand to settings for
.BR svgaclocks ", " ramdac ", " misc_ctl ", and " mach32eeprom
that are usually correct for ATI, Dell, AST cards. Be aware
that they really work like macros. That is, they override any setting
of
.BR svgaclocks ", " ramdac ", " misc_ctl ", and " mach32eeprom
made before them and individual aspects will be changed by a following
.BR svgaclocks ", " ramdac ", " misc_ctl ", and " mach32eeprom
command.
Note that the
.B mach32eeprom ignore
required for some Dell cards requires
you to include explicit timings for Mach32 modes other than 640x480x256.
The
.I mach32/mach32.std-modes
file in the svgalib distribution contains recommendations for modes from ATI.
I heard about a bug in some ATI chipsets returning wrong memory amounts
configs. (But cannot confirm that)
You can enforce correct chipset identification from the configuration file:
.TP
.BI "chipset Mach32 " "chiptype memory"
where
.I chiptype
is the sum of at exactly one value from each of the following two groups
.PD 0
.RS
.TP
.B 128
use no memory aperture.
.TP
.B 160
use a 1MB memory aperture.
.TP
.B 192
use a 4MB memory aperture.
.TP
.B 0
choose size for the memory aperture automatically.
.PD
.PP
and
.PD 0
.TP
.B 16
Ramdac is of type 0 (ATI68830)
.TP
.B 17
Ramdac is of type 1 (IMS-G173, SC11486)
.TP
.B 18
Ramdac is of type 2 (ATI68875, TLC34075)
.TP
.B 19
Ramdac is of type 3 (INMOS176, INMOS178)
.TP
.B 20
Ramdac is of type 4 (Bt481, Bt482)
.TP
.B 21
Ramdac is of type 5 (ATI68860)
.TP
.B 0
Ramdac type is queried from Mach32 chip.
.PD 1
.RE
.IP
.I memory
is the amount of videomemory in KB.
.PP
Note that the type of the ramdac can be set more conveniently with the
.B ramdac
command.
.SH 5. LOGICAL LINEWIDTH
At least my VRAM card seems to be very peculiar about logical
linewidths. From my experience a multiple of 64 pels is needed.
Your mileage may vary. Use the config file options to adjust it
and tell me if your card needs a different value. Include the name and
model number of the card and what the correct numbers should be. This
is so that I can correct the auto configuration of the driver.
If some svgalib application has problems, note that you can
force the logical linewidth to the default value from the
configfile. Probably this will lead to glitches in some 800x600
resolutions. You can
.B inhibit
these resolutions from the configfile
as well. Apropos glitches, I found no guidelines as to what clockrates
to use due to memory restrictions. I adjusted the driver, such that
I get a stable pic in all resolutions. However sometimes the screen
is disturbed by heavy video memory accesses. If you don't like that,
reduce the clocks used with the maxclock16 or maxclock24 command, resp.
This may of course lead to none of the predefined modes being used.
Then you can try to define your own mode via the define command.
.SH 6. NOISY VIDEO SIGNALS
If you get some flicker or heavy noise on your screen, some fine tuning may
be needed. My docs didn't give me hints as to what each card can stand.
Especially DRAM cards may give problems (I've VRAM). In that case, use the
fine tuning config commands and send me your results along with the output
of
.BR mach32info (6).
Then I can include them in my next release.
.SS Fine-tuning configuration commands
First you should think about the
.B maxclock*
configuration commands to reduce pixel clocks used for each color depth.
Especially important for DRAM cards is the video FIFO depth used to queue
memory values for writing to the screen. Here is a command to set this
value for the 8bpp modes:
.TP
.BI "vfifo8 " number
where
.I number is in range
.BR 0 " - " 15 .
The default is now 6.
Since vfifo is of some impact to the speed of the card, tell me the
lowest setting that satisfies your card.
For 16/24/32 modes, there are non-zero values preset from internal tables and
the EEPROM, however you can enforce minimal vfifo values with:
.PP
.BI "vfifo16 " number
.br
.BI "vfifo24 " number
.br
.BI "vfifo32 " number
.TP
.BI "blank " number
where
.I number
is
.BI "4 * " pixel_delay " + " blank_adjust
where
.IR pixel_delay " and " blank_adjust
are in range
.BR 0 " .. " 3 .
.I pixel_delay
delays pixels before they are sent to the DAC and
.I blank_adjust
adjusts the blank pulse for type 2 DAC's.
.B blank
should be set correctly for each DAC type automatically.
So use it only as a last resort.
.TP
.BI "latch " number
where
.I number
is the sum of zero or more of the following numbers:
.RS
.TP
.B 128
VRAM serial delay latch enable, DRAM latch bits 63 - 0 enable.
.TP
.B 4096
Latch video memory data.
.TP
.B 8192
Memory data delay latch enable for data bits 63 - 0.
.TP
.B 16384
Memory full clock pulse enable.
.RE
.IP
Default is to switch all settings on (they are on on my card by default anyway).
.PP
Note that these commands may vanish again once they are no longer needed for
debugging purposes.
There is no 320x200 mode in the EEPROM of the Mach32 at all, however
I defined one in the default configuration file for you. This is the best
thing I could get up on my card/screen. Note that it will probably
have big borders on your screen, and black lines in between the pixel lines.
This is because of the lack of low clocks < 16MHz on the Mach32 and the
lack of a line doubling mode as VGA has. The Mach32 is not intended
for such low resolutions. If you find a better mode or have an idea,
please let me know. You can also just remove my timings from the
default configuration file.
.SH 7. THE CONFIGURATION EEPROM
Ah yes, about the EEPROM, I figured out how to read out the Mach32
EEPROM. I did it by disassembling the BIOS routine mentioned in the
docs. I then redid it in C. The driver will use everything it finds
there.
Use the Mach32 install tools (they should have reached you together with
your Mach32 VGA card) to setup your card/monitor combo correctly.
The
.B monitors
setting from the config file (or default of 35kHz or something)
will be obeyed by the driver nevertheless (for safety!).
As you probably know already, accessing the EEPROM causes some screen
flickering. If this annoys you (or even worse your monitor) have a look
at the
.B mach32eeprom
command described below. This allows you to put the data from the
EEPROM into a file and which can be read whenever it is required.
Don't even think about changing the contents of the file. (There is
an easily faked checksum in it.). Anyway the driver ensures (hopefully)
that no damage can be caused.
Also, if some mode is not well aligned on your screen or you don't like
it's sync frequency, consider using the Mach32 install utility (setup for
custom monitor) and set one up interactively. If there is no valid faster
(higher VSYNC) standard mode given in the EEPROM the driver will use
that mode. You will find that this is fun compared with calculating video
timings for
.IR /etc/XF86Config " or " /etc/vga/libvga.config .
However the install utility does restrict the maximum pixel depth for
custom modes sometimes unneeded hard and the driver obeys that.
(Hmm.. actually it should be smart enough to decide itself which pixel
depth it can use in that mode.)
Since the standard modes are usually only slightly shifted to one side
a file with the configuration commands representing the standard modes is given
in
.I mach32/mach32.std-modes
in the svgalib distribution. You can use these as a starting point.
But here are some real problems:
.SH 8. EEPROM WOES
I got 2 reports of people having problems with incorrect EEPROM checksums.
Both had motherboards with onboard Mach32 VGA's from AST. I guessed a checksum
algorithm from those reports and put this in the code in addition to the
standard ATI style. Still I got a report of someone whose EEPROM was completely
empty. If you have problems with checksums send me the output of
.BR mach32info (6)
and I'll see what I can do.
By default svgalib writes a complaining message and ignores the contents.
You can have svgalib ignore the checksum and contents with the configuration command
.B mach32eeprom ignore
Then you can decide to use the partial info that is still in it. Use
.B mach32eeprom ignore usetimings
to use the videomodes that are defined in the EEPROM (if no better modes are
known by the driver). This is usually safe, because the driver knows
which modes are safe for your hardware (if
.BR clocks ", " monitor " and " ramdac
are configured correctly). You can also allow the driver to use the
configuration for the linear frame buffer in the EEPROM:
.B mach32eeprom ignore useaperture
or
.B mach32eeprom ignore usetimings useaperture
However I discourage this because the driver will just enable what the EEPROM
says about the aperture. Use
.BR mach32info (6)
to check the address it will choose is safe. It might be
better to use
.B setuplinear
to set up a 4MB aperture at a free address range.
.SH 9. THE MACH32EEPROM COMMAND
The
.B mach32eeprom
allows to work around these problems. Here is the complete description for this
configuration command.
.TP
.BI "mach32eeprom " filename
The
.I filename
has to begin with a "/".
Unfortunately reading the EEPROM causes annoying
screen flickering and is slow.
To avoid this, specify a
.I filename
from which to read the contents of the
EEPROM.
If the file cannot be read, the EEPROM is read out and the file
is created. There is a very simple checksum put into this file. Although
it can easily be fooled, don't change the file except you know
.B very, very
well what you are doing.
Also, as long as the file exists, changes in the
Mach32's EEPROM are ignored. Delete the file to recreate an updated
version on next use of svgalib. You should ensure that the permissions of
the file don't allow normal users to change it. (This may happen if umask
has a bad value when svgalib creates the file).
Example:
.B mach32eeprom /etc/vga/mach32.eeprom
.PP
Due to problems with some boards this command got
heavily expanded:
.TP
.BI "mach32eeprom " subcommand1 " [" subcommand2 "...]"
At least one
.I subcommand
is needed. Valid
.I subcommands
are:
.RS
.TP
.B ignore
Don't complain about checksum and don't use any EEPROM contents.
.TP
.B useaperture
Use the configuration for the memoryaperture given in the EEPROM.
.TP
.B usetimings
Use videomodes found in the EEPROM of the board.
.TP
.B nofile
Forget about any filename that maybe was already configured.
Don't read a file, don't create one.
.TP
.BI "file " filename
Newstyle form to specify the
.IR filename ;
On contrary to the
.BI "mach32eeprom " filename
form it can be mixed with any other
mach32eeprom subcommand.
.TP
.B updatefile
Don't read the file, always read the EEPROM (except when
.B ignore
is given) and create an
uptodate image of the EEPROM.
.TP
.B keepfile
Disable all previous updatefile commands.
.TP
.B compatible
Fall back to default behavior: If checksum on the EEPROM data is not ok, use nothing of the
configuration data. If it is ok, configure everything as specified in the EEPROM.
.RE
.IP
The subcommands are intended to be used together and are performed in the order
specified. For example:
.B mach32eeprom ignore useaperture usetimings
will ignore the checksum of your EEPROM, but use its contents.
Order is vital! So:
.B mach32eeprom useaperture usetimings ignore
won't use any configuration from your EEPROM. Be careful with the
.B useaperture
subcommand. Please see the
.B EEPROM WOES
section. Note that any non
understood
.I subcommand
will terminate the
.B mach32eeprom
command silently! Use only one
.I subcommand
per
.B mach32eeprom
command to avoid this.
The
.B mach32eeprom
command is usually not allowed in the environment variable
.BR SVGALIB_CONFIG .
.SH 10. SETUP OF THE MEMORY APERTURE (LINEAR FRAMEBUFFER)
Due to poor design, Xfree86 insists on setting up the aperture itself. It
doesn't reset the original settings at a VC switch once it runs. You
should not start X for the first time after a boot as long as an svgalib
application is running. This will result in pre X values being restored at a VC
switch by svgalib. If you use svgalib and XF86_Mach32 together, run X first or
at least do not start it while any svgalib appl. is still running. After X was
started once you can use svgalib and X in all combinations w/o any problems. Xfree
uses whatever address is given in
the
.B MEM_CFG
Mach32 register for a 4MB aperture, even if the aperture is not already enabled and
the value in this register is pointless garbage. This is IMHO
a dangerous bug as some systems may work only with a 1MB aperture.
However, usage of a correct EEPROM circumvents any such problems. If you
cannot use that, use
.B mach32info (6)
to find the address in
.B MEM_CFG.
Then,
.BR "if it is a senseable setting for your system" ,
enable a 4MB aperture at that address with
.BR setuplinear .
Ensure that no other card or memory uses the address range you choose.
.SH 11. ACCELERATOR SUPPORT AND OTHER WEIRD FEATURES
This version now has support for all accelerator functions of svgalib.
However they were intended for use with the cirrus chips. It may happen
that at runtime they find they cannot emulate the function actually
requested. Then you should disable the corresponding blit function
(at least for that application) with the blit config command.
Data transfer between the host and the Mach32 is normally via I/O. This
proved to be pretty slow. If a big enough aperture is available, a simple
memory copy is used instead. This is usually much faster. You can change
which method is used with the blit command. This I/O option affects only
.BR vga_imageblt (3).
The other functions are incredible fast.
For type 2 DACS, there is support for 8 bit per color (instead of the normal 6)
in the RGB triple in the color lookup table of the 256 color modes. This
can be enabled by an application, if it supports it. The
.BR testaccel (6)
demo uses it if supported by your hardware.
You can use
.BR vga_ext_set (3)
to use it from your programs.
.SH 12. RAMDACS
Mach32 Ramdacs are specified by a type in range 1 .. 5. This type can be
queried from the Mach32 and then specifies how to set up the ramdac. A list
of actual hardware chips used for each type exists, but is not of much use. The
Mach32 will return a type and the ramdac will be completely hardware compatible to
one of the given type.
Type 1 and 4 Dacs need different clock frequencies for high colormodes.
For 32K/64K colormodes the frequencies have to be doubled and for
16M colors (type 4 only) they have to be tripled. I followed the ATI scheme
and did this internally. However this means that for 32K/64K you can use
only clocks for which the doubled frequencies can be generated as well.
This is no hard restriction as the 16 clocks of the Mach32 can be divided by 2.
Thus if you setup some mode yourself try to use one of the divided clocks in
your timings and I can use the undivided clocks internally.
It is a real restriction for 16M colors. ATI themself only supports 25MHz
(640x480) here by use of a 75MHz clock. Depending on your clock chip other
values may be usable as well. Even the doubled/tripled clocks have to be less
than the magic 80 MHz. However the driver does all this itself. It may just
happen that some of the predefined or one of your handmade mode-timings
can't be used because the clock that is used cannot be doubled/tripled.
Even though there is already some tolerance in the driver you may fix that by
slighty changing the clock values that you set with the
.B clocks
command. But
note that this will as well affect the ability of the driver to calculate
video timings and thus it ability to check the monitor and DAC safety
restrictions.
In addition (in complete contrast to my original ATI docs) RAMDAC 4 does not support
RGB with blue byte first but only with red first. This required special handling and me
adding a bunch of functions to all modules of svgalib and vgagl. The added functions are
of lower performance than the usual functions. However most data has to be completely
mangled, so I doubt that it can be done much faster. Sorry.
Of course, I might have
forgotten to port some parts or even confused things. About bugs in the gl and drawing
libs, please ask Harm.
But then, I'm able to emulate a BGR ramdac on my card, so I should
even be able to reproduce your problems.
Recently I hear often about type 6 ramdacs in non ATI Mach32 cards. There exists
no info about these dacs, thus I cannot support them. The driver assumes unknown
DACs can stand up to 80MHz in 256 color clut modes and does not touch the
ramdac (that is, assumes it is in the 256 color mode already)
To get rid of the warning message you can use the
.TP
.BI "ramdac " n
configuration command. It allows to explicitly set the type of the dac to
.I n
(in range
.BR 0 " to " 5).
.B Ramdac 3
is the most dumbest ramdac possible, s.t. you can use
it without any fear for your hardware.
.TP
.B ramdac dumb
is equivalent to
.BR "ramdac 3" .
.TP
.B ramdac auto
switches back to the default autodetection.
.SH 13. MEANING OF THE DETECTION MESSAGE FROM SVGALIB
Some programs (which do not switch it off) will show a
.BI "Using Mach32 " version " (" size "M at " adr "M (" how "), " mem "K mem, DAC " dactype )
line. This will show up in
.BR testlinear (6)
etc but will probably scroll away when you use
.BR vgatest (6).
In this line:
.TP
.I version
is the version of the driver (as of my counting, not the svgalib
version).
.TP
.I size
is the size of the memory aperture. It can be
.BR 1 " or " 4 " (" 1
will lead to not using the linear aperture if your card has more than 1MB
memory, however applications can still use the 1MB aperture and page
the video memory through it in 1MB steps).
.I size
can also be
.B no
if no aperture is setup at all.
.TP
.I adr
is the base address of the aperture in MB.
.TP
.I how
is
.B autodetect
if the aperture was setup this way already when the
program started. It is
.B setup
when the the setting was enforced with a
.B setuplinear
configuration command. It is
.B EEPROM
when no aperture was detected,
but parameters to set it up were found in the EEPROM.
.TP
.I mem
is the amount of memory the card reported to have.
.TP
.I dactype
is the type of the DAC that was detected.
If a special ramdac type was set with the
.B ramdac
command a
.B (set)
will be displayed after
.IR dactype .
.PP
If
.IR mem ", " dactype
and/or the chipset were enforced with
.B chipset from the configuration file
or
.BR vga_setchipsetandfeatures (3)
a
.B forced
will be appended to the line.
.SH 14. CONCLUSIONS
A final word: I have an ATI ULTRA PRO/2MB/EISA with a Type 2 DAC.
My monitor is an EIZO F550i-M. Everything I tried works on it like
a charm. However, I couldn't try it with other machines myself and esp.
other DAC's. Fortunately the Type 2 DAC is the worst to code. So I
will probably have gotten the other DAC's right. But please be warned!
I did my very best to code the driver to support the other DAC's by
just reading the docs.
.B But i can't give any definitive guarantee for
.B it to work or even not damaging your hardware. So please be careful!
Note that you will have to set the environment variable
.B SVGALIB_MACH32
to
.B ILLTRYIT
if your DAC is not type 0, 2, 3 or 4. This will of course change
if no one with a DAC equal to 1 or 5 has serious problems. If you have
a different DAC, making patches to support your card will be much more
helpful instead of just complaining.
If you have a different DAC that works well tell me as well such that I
can remove the need for SVGALIB_MACH32 in the next release. Still, even
now, after years, I got no reports of a Mach32 card with a type 1 or 5
ramdac. Go figure.
Thank you for your audience and wishes you will enjoy this driver,
.br
Michael.
.SH FILES
.I /etc/vga/libvga.config
.br
.I /etc/vga/mach32.eeprom
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR svgalib (7),
.BR libvga.config (5),
.BR mach32info (6).
.SH AUTHOR
The Mach32 driver and this documentation was written by
Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de>.