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- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
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- Jorge F. Delgado Mendoza (ernar@dit.upm.es)
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- 12 March 1996
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- 1. Supported chipsets
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- The driver is used in the 8-bit / 256-color SVGA server and the mono server.
- The following chipsets for Oak Tech. Inc. are supported:
-
- OTI037C
- 8-bit SVGA chipset, with up to 256Kbytes of DRAM, only preliminary
- support is included in the driver as I don't have a 037c to test
- it.
-
- OTI067
- ISA SVGA chipset, up to 512Kbytes of DRAM (usually 70/80 ns).
-
- OTI077
- Enhanced version of the 067, with support for 1Mbyte and up to 65
- Mhz dot-clock, this chipset supports up to 1024x768x256 colors in
- Non-Interlaced mode, and up to 1280x1024x16 colors Interlaced.
-
- OTI087
- One of the first VLB chipsets available, it has a 16-bit external
- data path, and a 32-bit internal memory-controller data path, it
- also has register-based color expansion, hardware cursor, a primi-
- tive BitBlt engine, a 64 bit graphic latch and some other new (on
- its time) features. Maximum BIOS resolutions are 1024x768x256 Non-
- Interlaced and 1280x1024x256 interlaced. Maximum Dot-Clock is
- 80Mhz, but is usually coupled with the OTI068 clock generator whose
- highest frequency is 78Mhz. Supports up to 2MBytes of 70/70R ns
- DRAM.
-
- OTI107 and OTI111
- These are new, PCI chipsets by Oak Tech. Inc. Support is not
- included for them, as they are very rare, and I haven't had the
- chance to look at one of these boards.
-
- All the chipsets up to the OTI087 are "Backwards compatible", in fact some
- early drivers for the OTI087 based chipsets were those made for the 077.
-
- Accelerated support is included only for OTI087 chipsets, also Mono server is
- only included for 067/077 chipsets.
-
-
- 2. XF86Config options
-
- The following options are of particular interest to the Oak driver. Each of
-
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- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
-
-
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-
-
- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
-
-
-
- them must be specified in the 'svga' driver section of the XF86Config file,
- within the Screen subsections to which they are applicable (you can enable
- options for all depths by specifying them in the Device section).
-
- Option "linear" (OTI087)
- This option enables a linear framebuffer at 0xE00000 (14Mb) for
- cards recognized as ISA by the probe. Cards that are VLB will map
- the framebuffer at 0x4E00000. The aperture depends on the VideoRam
- parameter in the XF86Config file or on the probed value for the
- board. It will speed up performance by about 15% on a VLB-based
- boards for a DX2-66 486.
-
- Sometimes a motherboard will not be able to map at 0x4E00000, and
- then linear mode will not work with more than 14 Mbytes of main
- RAM. I know this because mine doesn't.
-
- Option "fifo_aggressive" (OTI087)
- This option will cause the command FIFO threshold of the chipset to
- be set at 0 instructions, which should be optimal for 16-bit data
- transfers, as empirical use of different thresholds, with xbench,
- show. Expect a 5-10% of performance boost on a DX2-66 486.
-
- Option "fifo_conservative" (OTI087)
- This option will set the FIFO to a safe value of 14, slowing the
- board by a 50%, use this only if you experience streaks or anoma-
- lies on the screen.
-
- Option "enable_bitblt" (OTI087)
- This option will enable an internal cache on the board that will be
- used as a rudimentary bitblt engine. Performance boost is more or
- less 100%, (double BlitStones on xbench). Most OTI087 boards seem
- to have this feature broken, corrupting text from xterms and leav-
- ing mouse droppings throughout the screen. As a rule of thumb,
- enable it, if it works badly, disable it ;).
-
- Option "clock_50" (OTI087)
- This one will force the internal speed to 50 Mhz.
-
- Option "clock_66" (OTI087)
- This one will force the internal speed to 66 Mhz, speeding up per-
- formance of the chipset.
-
- Option "no_wait" (OTI087)
- Sets the VLB interface to no wait states. On a medium VLB board
- (mine is VLB/PCI, so its not a very fast one) in VLB transparent
- mode, it manages up to 16 Mbytes/second transfer rate through the
- bus.
-
- Option "first_wait" (OTI087)
- Makes the VLB interface to add one wait state to the first read or
- write of a given burst.
-
- Option "first_wwait" (OTI087)
- Similar to the previous one, this only inserts a wait state in the
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-
- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
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-
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- first 'write' of a given burst. reads are not affected. This is the
- default behaviour of the server.
-
- Option "write_wait" (OTI087)
- This configures the VLB interface to add one wait state to each
- write cycle.
-
- Option "read_wait" (OTI087)
- This configures the VLB interface to add one wait state to each
- read cycle.
-
- Option "all_wait" (OTI087)
- Enables the slowest VLB transfer adding wait states in all cases.
- Hopefully, no board will need this enabled.
-
- Option "one_wait" (OTI087)
- Sets the VLB interface to at least one wait state.
-
- Option "noaccel" (OTI087)
- One accelerated routine has been lately added to the driver, allow-
- ing it to draw solid fills quite faster. This routine only works
- (up to date) on segmented addressing, and only if the virtual width
- is 1024. This option is automatically enabled by the driver. Use
- this option if you want to disable it.
-
- As a rule of thumb, use the option "no_wait", and if it doesn't result in cor-
- rupting text, lucky you. If not, try "first_wwait", and downwards. ISA card
- owners should not use these options.
-
-
- 3. Mode issues
-
- The use of very high dot-clocks has a REAL negative effect on the performance
- of the boards, due to its limited 80Mbit/sec, higher dot clocks limit its abil-
- ity to draw data into the framebuffer. Thus expect better performance of a
- 72Mhz based mode than on a 78Mhz based one (for example) where more bandwidth
- is required for screen refresh.
-
- It does not make much sense to use the highest clock (78 MHz) for 1024x768 at
- 76 Hz on a OTI087; the card will almost come to a standstill. A 72 MHz dot
- clock results in 70 Hz which should be acceptable. If you have a monitor that
- supports 1024x768 at 76 Hz with a 78 MHz dot clock, a standard OTI087 based
- card is a poor match anyway.
-
-
- 4. Linear addressing
-
- Linear addressing is hardwired to 14 Mbytes for ISA boards and 78 Mbytes for
- VLB boards, thus if you have more than that on your board you shouldn't enable
- it. The aperture is selected from the VideoRam parameter of the XF86Config or
- from the amount of memory that is detected if VideoRam is not found.
-
- I hope (because I have not tested it very thoroughly) that linear addressing
- will work on ISA boards, VLB ones are fine (I am writing this stuff on mine).
-
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- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
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-
-
- GOOD LUCK!!!!
-
- Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Oak.sgml,v 3.12 1997/01/25 03:22:02 dawes Exp $
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- $XConsortium: Oak.sgml /main/8 1996/05/12 20:58:00 kaleb $
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- Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
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- CONTENTS
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- 1. Supported chipsets ...................................................... 1
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- 2. XF86Config options ...................................................... 1
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- 3. Mode issues ............................................................. 3
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- 4. Linear addressing ........................................................ 3
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