[9fans] Ati Xpert 98 Video card

[9fans] Ati Xpert 98 Video card

[James]

I should have no problem using a Ati-Xpert video card with Plan 9. Should I
get PCI or AGP?
The Ati Mach64 is 2mb video card?
James

[9fans] Re: Ati Xpert 98 Video card

[vecera]

> I should have no problem using a Ati-Xpert video card with Plan 9.
Should I
> get PCI or AGP?
> The Ati Mach64 is 2mb video card?
> James

I had another Mach64 video card - ATI 3D Charger on AGP with 8 MB RAM.
But with this card I had problems - it produced some flickers on screen.
Later I have tryed another ATI 3D Charger on AGP with 4 MB RAM.
The screen looks better but some noise remain. I dodn't know why...
But autors say the ATI cards have the best support.(?)
vecera


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[9fans] Re: Ati Xpert 98 Video card

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

James wrote:
> I should have no problem using a Ati-Xpert video card with Plan 9. Should I
> get PCI or AGP?
> The Ati Mach64 is 2mb video card?

I have gotten good results from the Xpert-98 (3D RAGE PRO version).
Xpert-128 (RAGE-128) however did not work right last time I tried it.

MACH64 denotes a family of chips, which can be used with various
amounts of memory (the one I used to have was 4MB).

Re: [9fans] Re: Ati Xpert 98 Video card

[Russ Cox]

flickers on the screen can be fixed by trying
lower resolutions or refresh rates.  it really
means that we're not setting the memory parameters
correctly, but the easiest work-around is to not
push the memory so hard.

vga is a very hard problem.  oddly enough the
ati cards do have the best support, because we have
the most complete documentation for them.  but
even that's not everything we need to know.
the cards with the "best support" are usually
the cards with the most recently written driver,
since the contemporary cards have not had a chance
to diverge from what was used to write the driver.
the main problem is that vendors think it's
sufficient to release a windows driver rather
than real documentation.

if you pick a random <vendor> card and hope it
will work, your chances are best if that vendor
is ati.  that said, the savage4-based cards
seem to be working quite nicely.

i have a stalled vga rewrite that addresses a
few problems and adds some control of various
common features found on laptops, but 
getting vgas working is an inherently ad hoc
process and no amount of rewriting will get rid
of that aspect completely.

russ