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‡ README file for ‡ ‡ ELSA WINNER ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 Driver for NEXTSTEP, ‡ ‡ version 1.36 ‡ ‡ WINNER 2000PRO/X PCI ‡ WINNER 1000AVI PCI ‡ WINNER 2000PRO PCI ‡ WINNER 1000PRO PCI ‡ ‡ ‡ Copyright (c) 1994-95 ELSA GmbH, Aachen (Germany) ‡ ‡ Subsidary: ‡ ELSA GmbH ELSA Inc. ‡ Sonnenweg 11 2041 Mission College Blvd., Suite 165 ‡ D-52070 Aachen Santa Clara, CA 95054 ‡ Germany U.S.A. ‡ ‡ Tel.: +49/0-241-9177-0 Phone: +1-408-565-9669 ‡ Fax : +49/0-241-9177-600 Phone: 1-800-272-ELSA ‡ BBS : +49/0-241-9177-981 Fax : +1-408-565-9650 ‡ ISDN: +49/0-241-9177-7800 BBS : +1-408-565-9630 ‡ CIS : GO ELSA CIS : GO ELSA ‡ ‡ April 12th 1995, up, tr Table of Contents: 1. Overview 2. Disk contents 3. Installation and Configuration 3.1 Installation 3.1.1 short instructions 3.1.2 detailed instructions 3.2 Configuration - single screen 3.2.1 short instructions 3.2.2 detailed instructions 3.3 Multi headed systems 3.3.1 Installation of multi headed systems 4. Notes 5. Known Problems ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Overview This disk contains the ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 driver for NEXTSTEP on a DOS file system and a conversion tool. The ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 supports NEXTSTEP(R) for Intel(R) Processors, Release 3.3 and higher, a product of NeXT computer, Inc. This file contains an explanation of the installation process in chapter 3, as well as instructions for converting video modes which have been created using DOS based ELSA Tools. If your system is based on the ISA bus, reading of Chapter 6 is recommended. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Disk contents The software described here is located in directory "NEXT\MULTISCR". That directory contains these files: WINNEXT.TAR ELSA driver as unix tar file. VM2TIM.EXE DOS based tool for conversion of video modes of a graphics board to a file format conforming to the NEXTSTEP software LIESMICH.TXT german version of this file README.TXT this file File versions are coded using the timestamp of a file. If e.g. a file is dated 04-22-94 1:10am, it is version 1.10. Hint: opposed to DOS, file names and disk labels are all lower case in the NEXTSTEP software environment . ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Installation and Configuration 3.1 Installation Hint: Help on handling the workspace manager, discs, files and icons is found in the "User's Guide" (see "Literature", below). You can also use Workspace Manager's Online Help (in the menu, go "Info->Help... ?"). 3.1.1 short instructions Copy the file WINNEXT.TAR to a local working directory and extract the tar file using workplace manager's archive inspector (double click->inspector->extract). Start Configure by a double click on the extracted "ELSA_install". Go on with "Configuration". Hint: If your local working directory contains an old version of the ELSA software, remove it before beginning to install the new version. 3.1.2 detailed instructions Insert the disk containing the driver into the drive. In the menu, choose "Disk->Check for Disks". A new icon showing a disk comes up in file viewer's shelf. Click it once, then double click on "NEXT" and "STANADARD" to change in the directory "NEXT\STANDARD". Then select "winnext.tar". Move the icon named "winnext.tar" over your working directory's icon in the shelf. When two squares show up, release the button. This copies the file to your working directory. The working directory might e.g. be your home directory. Now click the working directory in the shelf, thus changing to that directory. Double-click the copy of "winnext.tar". An inspector shows up; extract the file, close the inspector. Two more files are there now: "ELSA_install" and "WINNER.config.tgz". A double click on "ELSA_install" will then start the Configure Application. If you are not logged in as root, you will be asked for the superuser password. In case an old version of the driver has been installed already, you will be asked for verification. Now go on with the Configuration process (see chapter "Configuration"). Hint: ELSA recommends to remove the files "winnext.tar", "ELSA_install" and "WINNER.config.tgz", in your working directory after installation, since they are not used any more then. To remove a file, select it and drag it over the recycler icon. In any case these files must be deleted before updating to a new version of the driver. 3.2 Configuration - single screen Hint: Handling of the Configure application is explained in "Installing and Configuring NEXTSTEP Release 3.2 for Intel(R) Processors" (see "literature", below) If no display adaptor had been installed before, a selection box shows up. Choose "ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 Display Adapter". 3.2.1 short instructions The "Select..." button starts the "display mode selection" window. Here you have to declare which board of the WINNER 1000/2000 series is installed in the system. Relevant here is the product name and the memory configuration. Following that step, a resolution and colorspace can be selected from a list of modes. In a third step, a the refresh rate to the current mode can be selected from a list. The box "technical information" shows hints; after resolution and refresh rate have been selected, the resulting line frequency and pixel frequency are showed here. Attention: You must assure, that the monitor in use with the system is appropriate to operate with the line and pixel frequency shown in the information box. An inappropriate monitor may be damaged, when used with such a line or pixel frequency. The maximum line and pixel frequencies for a monitor are given in the monitor manual. 3.2.2 detailed instructions The window "Display Devices" shows two address range selection boxes; the box "display mode selection" containing the button "Select..." and an icon "ELSA". Clicking the button "Select..." shows the "Card Selection Window". Please specify which one of the ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 board series is installed in the system. Relevant are the product name and the memory configuration, i.e. how many megabytes of VRAM are on the board. Click on the button initially named "none". A popup list of boards shows up. Move the cursor up and down to the right specification. If your board's product name is not given precisely, the more general name is valid. For a WINNER 1000PCI with 2MB VRAM e.g. choose "WINNER 1000-2MB". Example : A WINNER 2000PRO with 4 megabyte VRAM is installed in the system. You choose "WINNER 2000PRO-4MB". Attention: In case of a WINNER 2000VL with 2 megabyte VRAM you must choose "WINNER 2000VL-2MB", NOT "WINNER 2000-2". Be careful: Only the correct board selection assures, that the display modes you can select further on are realizable on the installed board. When the board selection is done, you can specify a resolution and color space. This driver supports the following of the NEXTSTEP Windowserver's color spaces: "BW:8", which is 256 step grayscale, "RGB:256/8", which is 256 colors (NEXTSTEP Version 3.3 and higher only), "RGB:555/16", which is 32768 colors (hicolor), and "RGB:888/32", which is 16.7 million colors (truecolor). Hint: The decision about color space has implications on the memory demands the Windowserver will show. Since the Windowserver holds all the Windows in memory, keep in mind that one pixel costs you one byte in BW:8, two bytes in RGB:555/16, and four bytes in RGB:888/32. If you need color, RGB:555/16 will be good enough for most applications. For every resolution a refresh rate can be chosen. The box "Technical Information" shows the requirements to the used monitor, especially the line and pixel frequency must be lower than the maximum line and maximum pixel frequency specified for your monitor. Attention: You must assure, that the monitor in use with the system is appropriate to operate with the line and pixel frequency shown in the information box. An inappropriate monitor may be damaged when used with such a line or pixel frequency. The maximum line and pixel frequencies for a monitor are given in the monitor manual. The window "Card Selection Window" can be left by pressing the "OK" button thereby accepting the selections made so far, or by pressing the "Cancel" button, reestablishing the state that was valid before entering the window. If the WINNER card specification was changed or specified for the first time, framebuffer mapping will be changed according to the card chosen. An attention panel occurs. The box "Mapped Memory" shows the beginning and length of the area in address space where the board's video memory will be mapped into. Numbers are in hexadezimal notation. Usually, the value that was set when the board was chosen, will be ok. The specifications in the "Port Address" Box cannot be changed. 3.3 Multi headed systems It is a feature of NEXTSTEP 3.3 that more than one graphics adaptor can be used. This driver version supports the multi headed system feature. The feature is restricted to PCI based systems only. 3.3.1 Installation of multi headed systems The installation process of a multi headed system is a bit complicated. It may be a wise decision to read the instructions before beginning to act. Here is an outline of what is to do: 1. Find out the PCI location of the graphics card the system boots on. The first driver instance must work on that board. 2. Install a single-screen system. 3. Install a multi headed system just by adding boards and corresponding driver instances in Configure.app. Here is a detailed description: 1. Install all the graphics adaptors in your system and connect them to their monitors. 2. After the system is switched on now, only one of your monitors is activated by the mainboard BIOS, the others stay black. This is your "main screen". Switch the system off again, before it starts to boot. 3. Deinstall all graphics cards except the one that was activated by the BIOS in step 2. 4. Now, boot the system with this one graphics card installed. 5. Install the driver as described in Paragraph 3.1 and start Configure.app as described in Paragraph 3.2 of this file. If no graphics driver had been installed previously, configure shows a window that allows adding drivers. If a graphics driver had been installed, remove it, save the configuration, quit configure and restart it again. Note: When adding a driver instance, the bus location of the board is shown in parantheses after the name of the driver. This looks like "ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 driver ... (Dev:12 Func:0 Bus:0)" Write down the number that is shown after the "Dev:" (12 in this case), you will need it later. Double click on the entry to add the driver. 6. Go on configuring the driver instance as described under Paragraph 3.2 . 7. Shut down the system, reinstall the other graphics boards and boot up the system again. After the system has booted, the main screen shows the video mode selected in step 5. Now, proceed to configure the system by adding more driver instances. Start Configure.app, and for every additional graphics board, do the following steps 8 and 9: 8. Press the "Add" button. A list of driver names is shown, with the bus location of the related card shown in parentheses. Double click the "ELSA WINNER ..." entry for the respective board. Be shure, not to add a second driver instance for the same bus location. Write down the bus locations of the boards you already configured, as you did with the "main screen" board. 9. Configure the board as described in 3.2. You should get a conflict on framebuffer memory mapping, which you have to resolve by pressing the minus button of the "Mapped memory" box repeatedly until the "conflicts" window is empty. 10. Having configured all graphics boards, save the configuration, quit and reboot the system. All monitors are active now. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Notes 4.1 Release Notes Version 1.0 of 22.04.94 was the initial version Version 1.10 supplies the WINNER 2000PRO-H and the high refresh truecolor modes on WINNER 2000PRO-4 boards. Bug fixes: In version 1.0, only the first dynamic mode was read in, if mode names were delimited by a literal '\n'. The "Dynamic Modes" entry is read in correctly now. In version 1.0, problems could occur on some 50MHz VL bus systems. Therefore VL-Bus handling was changed slightly. Version 1.20 supports RGB:444/16 modes on WINNER 2000PRO-2/ -4/ -H supports RGB:256/8 modes on NEXTSTEP 3.3 handles the default memory address more user friendly the original Cube's resolution of 1120 x 832 was added Bug fixes: Gamma correction is handled correctly now. Version 1.21 supports the B release boards of the WINNER 2000PRO-PCI-8.B Version 1.25 single screen driver for the WINNER 1000AVI and WINNER 2000PRO/X-2, -4, -8. Version 1.35 multi headed system driver for the WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-8 Version 1.36 multi headed system driver for the WINNER 1000AVI-PCI-2, WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-2, WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-4 and WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-8 4.2 Literature The handling of the Workspace Manager is explained in the "NEXTSTEP User's Guide" as well as in the online help. To get the online help, choose "Help... ?", which is a submenu of the "Info" item in the main menu. The Configure application has no online help, but is explained in "Installing and Configuring NEXTSTEP Release ... for Intel(R) Processors". The manuals mentioned are part of the NEXTSTEP product. 4.3 More video modes / conversion of video modes defined under DOS If you have created video modes under the DOS or Windows environment and want to used them as display modes in the NEXTSTEP environment, ELSA supplies a tool to do the conversion of EEROM data on the board to a format readable by ELSA's NEXTSTEP driver. Hint: This sections requires a certain amount of knowledge and experience of the NEXTSTEP software environment. You will need superuser rights to be able to execute the steps that follow. The DOS based conversion tool VM2TIM.EXE, which is part of this package, prints out the video mode information in a ASCII text format that can be directly appended to the Instance0.table in the directory /usr/Devices/WINNER.config. After changing the "Display Mode" entry in that file to the required display mode, that mode will be used after the system has been rebooted. Proceed as follows: Create your monitor timings and store them into EEROM using the ELSA installation software. Then, still in the DOS environment, enter: "vm2tim -unix -o dmodes" A file "dmodes" is created which must be imported into the NEXTSTEP software environment, e.g. on a disc. In the NEXTSTEP environment: Log in as root and change to the directory /usr/Devices/WINNER.config. Copy the file dmodes to some place like e.g. /tmp/dmodes and enter "cat /tmp/dmodes >>Instance0.table" Then modify the file Instance0.table using an editor of your choice. Change the line beginning with "Display Mode" to the display mode you want to use. Example: You want to use a mode with a resolution of 1216x940 at 75Hz, 256 grayscale. After appending dmodes as explained, you find an entry in Instance0.table "1216x940_75Hz_BW:8_ni" = "1216 940 8 (...)"; Using the editor, now enter the line "Display Mode" = "Height: 940 Width: 1216 Refresh: 75Hz bitsPerPixel: BW:8" If you have more than one of those modes and want to manage them just like the predefined ones, edit the file (boardname).modelist and insert a new line for each mode you want to add. Here is an explaining example: Example: Supposed you have made the changes given in the last example and now want to enter it into the modelist so that it appears in the Card Selection Window. Suppose you use a WINNER 2000 with 4 megabyte VRAM. Edit the file WINNER2000-4.modelist in the directory /usr/Devices/WINNER2000-4.modelist. # # Width Height ColorSpace Refresh Flag (always 0) ... 1152 864 RGB:555/16 91 0 1280 1024 BW:8 75 0 ... Just inserting the line 1216 940 BW:8 75 0 you get 1152 864 RGB:555/16 91 0 1216 940 BW:8 75 0 1280 1024 BW:8 75 0 and next time Configure is started, the Card Selection Window shows a new mode "1216x940 BW:8" between "1152x864 RGB:555/16" and "1280x1024 BW:8" and refresh rate of 75 Hz can be selected for that mode. The last number in the line must be a "1" for interlaced modes. 4.4 444 gun depth When using 16 bits per pixel, the number of bits used to represent the red, green and blue color values respectively ("gun depth"), can be chosen differently as indicated by the "444" or "555" values in the colorspace name that is common in the NEXTSTEP environment. In an "RGB:555/16" color space, 16 bits are used to represent one pixel. 5 bits are used to represent the current of the red, green and blue electron gun of the cathode ray tube, respectively. The remaining bit is unused. Accordingly, in RGB:444/16 representation 4 bits are to code each color gun's signal values. On the WINNER 2000PRO-2,-4 and -H, the driver supports RGB:555/16 AND RGB:444/16 modes. Using RGB:444/16 colorspace results in driver speed advantage compared to RGB:555/16 modes. The reason is that the WindowServer internally uses a 444-gun depth when working in 16 bit mode. So this native format can just be put into the framebuffer, while using RGB:555/16 means data always has to be converted, before it can be sent to display memory. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Known Problems 5.1 SoftPC In case SoftPC by Insignia will not work properly, try the following modifications: 1. This modification is not necessary, if you are using NEXTSTEP version 3.3 and higher In file /usr/Devices/Instance0.table change the line "Memory Maps"="0xMMMMMMMM-0xNNNNNNNN"; to "Memory Maps"="0xMMMMMMMM-0xNNNNNNNN 0xa0000-0xbffff 0xc0000-0xcffff"; (The Ms and Ns stand for any value you find here). 2. In file .../SoftPC.app/video_types append these two lines: "WINNER" = "TextInterleaved"; 5.2 Supported Bus systems The ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 driver for NEXTSTEP supports PCI, VL and EISA based boards. The usability of ISA based boards can not be granted. Problems may occur on systems which are equipped with more than 8 megabyte main memory. The technical background is discussed now: The ISA bus knows of 24 address bits spanning an address space of 16 megabytes size and corresponding to addresses 0x000000-0xFFFFFF. The 80386 and later processors can access a 32 bit wide address space, i.e. 4 gigabyte corresponding to addresses 0x00000000-0xFFFFFFFF. The display memory is mapped into CPU address space using segment 8 megabyte in size. You can specify the start address of that segment using Configure (see "Configuration"). As far as a system is equipped with more than 8 megabyte of main memory, this start address must be moved to beyond the 16 megabyte boundary of the ISA bus. For the graphics board to be accessible here, the system must do accesses to the ISA bus even for addresses which are beyond that boundary. It is a property of the system which may vary from one system to another. The systems' behaviour is unspecified here. If such an access is done, only 24 of the CPU's 32 address bits are decoded. The state of the remaining 8 bits is oblivious. As a result, the graphics board seems to appear at multiple places in the address space, each occurance corresponding to one of the 256 state of the oblivious bits. On the other hand, conflicts with memory will not happen since the main memory serves CPU memory accesses before the ISA bus will initiate an access. Example: An ISA bus based system is equipped with 24 megabytes of main memory and a WINNER 2000-4, so main memory serves addresses 0x00000000-0x017FFFFF. The WINNER is configured so that the display memory is mapped to 0x03800000-0x04FFFFFF. The CPU now accesses 0x03800000. Main memory does not serve that address, so an ISA bus access is initiated. Here on the bus, the address reads as 0x800000, since there are only 24 address bits. The graphics card reacts to the address and serves it. Now the CPU accesses 0x00800000. The main memory serves the address, an ISA bus access is not even initiated. The ISA bus thus is not involved. This scheme works alright, as long as the system puts memory accesses beyond 16 megabyte that are not answered on the local bus e.g. by main memory on the ISA bus. Since this is a property of the system that is not prescribed by specification, it may vary from system to system. On those ISA systems that do not comply to that scheme, display memory must fit into the first 16 megabyte. Since its mapped memory segment is 8 megabyte wide, only 8 megabyte remain for the systems main memory. Experience was made so far on a Compaq 66m (an EISA machine) and a no name VESA Local bus (VL) machine. In those systems, the ISA boards worked well. A test in a PCI based system was negative. Response on that issue is welcome. You may use the ELSA Bulletin Board System, the phone number is in your WINNER board's manual.