SciTech Display Doctor 1.0 for Linux ------------------------------------ PREVIEW RELEASE --------------- About SciTech Display Doctor for Linux: --------------------------------------- SciTech Display Doctor for Linux brings SciTech's proven DOS and Windows device support technologies to the Linux Operating System. Although one of the core features of our DOS and Windows products is the support for the VESA VBE/Core standard, the Linux version has nothing at all to do with VESA services. Rather SciTech Display Doctor for Linux incorportes the new SciTech Nucleus, Graphics Architecture device driver to bring SciTech's device support to the Linux platform. SciTech Nucleus is a binary portable, OS neutral, device driver architecture. As binary portable drivers, SciTech can fully develop and test the core device drivers in the DOS and Windows environments, while being able to target any Intel x86 based OS as the runtime environment (such as Linux). This essentially allows the Linux product to utilise the same SciTech binary device drivers as the DOS and Windows versions of the product, improving the quality and performance of the drivers for all supported operating systems. Although SciTech Nucleus drivers will be able to be used directly by applications built with the free SciTech MGL Graphics Library for Linux, SciTech Display Doctor for Linux also provides a Universal X11 driver based on the XFree86 sources. All features of traditional XFree86 servers are supported including: . Full 2D acceleration . XFree86 extensions such as VidMode and DGA for fullscreen applications . XAA (XFree Acceleration Architecture) support . On-the-fly mode switching . Full Monitor Power Management support via the VESA DPMS Standard. However the SciTech Display Doctor X11 driver also provides the following additional features not found in other servers: . Plug and Play configuration of your hardware, including the monitor for DDC2B-compliant monitors (Microsoft Plug and Play compatible). This includes never having to create CRTC timings by hand again! . Single binary server than runs on every chipset supported by the SciTech drivers (virtually any existing card), with hardware acceleration. . Both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio display modes. . Low resolution display modes such as 320x240, 400x300 and 512x384 for fullscreen games like Quake and Quake II. Software requirements: ---------------------- . Any Linux distribution, with kernel >= 2.0 (tested with a 2.0.35 kernel) and GNU libc6 (Red Hat 5.1). . XFree86 3.3.2 libraries and files (not provided in this package), previous versions may work too but are not recommended. . GPM mouse software (comes with all distributions). . Tcl/Tk version 7.4 or higher (8.0 recommended). If you do not have the above or later versions of the software installed on your Linux system, you may want to upgrade your software before attempting to install SciTech Display Doctor. Please also ensure that you are using the latest versions of the above software before sending in any bug reports. Installation and configuration: ------------------------------- Once you have unzipped the package, to install and setup SciTech Display Doctor simply run the "setup" script _as root_ and on a text mode console. Do *not* run the setup script from an XTerm or a remote login, as it require direct access to the hardware to detect and configure the software. For example from the install directory type: ./setup Follow the instructions on the screen and answer the questions about the installation paths, etc. After installing all the necessary files, the setup script will then attempt to do automatic detection and analysis of your graphics hardware. If this succeeds, the XF86Setup program should be automatically started to allow you to configure the server. Once you get to the XF86Setup stage, installation and configuration is similar to a regular XFree86 setup with the following exceptions: 1. You don't have to choose your graphics hardware; it is detected completely automatically. 2. If your graphics card supports the SCI services (see below) and your monitor is Plug and Play compatible (VESA DDC2B), the setup program will automatically detect your monitor and it's frequency ranges. If not you may select your monitor from the extensive monitor database. 3. You don't need to edit the XF86Config configuration script to add mode tables, CRTC timings and refresh rates. This is all done automatically for you using the VESA GTF timings and SciTech's extensive Discrete Monitor Timing database. 4. Refresh rate control is currently provided by an extension to the XF86Config configuration script. You can change the global refresh rate for all modes (default is 60Hz Non-Interlaced) by adding the following to XF86Config: RefreshRate freq Choose the vertical refresh rate in hertz to be used (in the "scitech" Screen section). 5. Some additional command line parameters have been added to the XF86_SDD server: -vfreq Choose the refresh rate in Hertz -device Choose the controller to use (0..n-1) NOTE: Please keep a copy of your existing XF86Config file before installing this product so that you can back it out later if necessary! Optional Kernel patch for faster BIOS support: ---------------------------------------------- In order to bring its existing DOS/Windows device support technology to the Linux platform, SciTech used the Linux Real Mode Interface (with some bug fixes and enhancements) so that we can utilize the real mode BIOS on the graphics card. Because of the fact that the current Linux kernels can only enable IO permissions for ports from 0-0x3FF, and that V86 tasks cannot have an IOPL to allows direct access to all ports, all I/O port access by the real mode BIOS faults back to the V86 monitor and we emulate it. Hence the performance of some BIOS'es (noteably Rendition and Matrox) may be improved by applying SciTech's kernel patch. This kernel patch increases the size of the I/O bitmap table to the full 8Kb, allowing the V86 monitor to enable full I/O port access for the BIOS so that it can run at full speed. Note however that this patch is not mandatory, and all cards tested thus far work fine with without the patch, but changing video modes may be faster with the patch applied. Once you have started the X server, there will be no performance difference between the standard Kernel and the patched kernel. Also note that this patch may cause a performance degradation on memory constrained systems as it increases the size of the task structure from 4Kb to 8Kb, and all tasks are required to be in physically contiguous pages. To apply the patch to the kernel sources, just cd to your kernel sources directory (most likely /usr/src/linux) and run the following command: patch -p1 < scitech-2.0.35.diff This patch was created against a 2.0.35 source tree, but it should work with previous releases (although it is strongly recommended to upgrade to the latest kernel), and hopefully future 2.0 kernels. Beta reports and bug reports: ----------------------------- Send bug reports to sddlinuxbeta@scitechsoft.com. Please use the supplied bug report form (bugrept.txt) to ensure that we have enough information to be able to track down your problem. You may also want to check out the SciTech Display Doctor beta newsgroup on our news server at: news://news.scitechsoft.com/scitech.display.doctor.beta List of all supported chips: ---------------------------- This is a complete list of the various graphics cards that SciTech Display Doctor supports. Please note that this list refers to the actual chips being used, not a board-level implementation. Thus you will not see any products from Hercules or STB on the list, but their products are supported because they use S3, Cirrus, Tseng, etc. chips. Also, any card with less than 512KB of memory cannot be supported in SciTech Display Doctor. . 3DLabs Permedia, Permedia 2 . Acer Labs M3141, M3145, M3147V . Ahead V5000A, V5000B . Alliance ProMotion 6410, 6422, AT24, AT25, AT3D . ARK Logic ARK1000VL/PV, ARK2000PV, ARK2000MT, Quadro64 . ATI Technologies 18800, 28800, Mach32, Mach64, 3D Rage I/ II/ II+DVD/IIC, 3D Rage Pro . Avance Logic ALG2101, 2201, 2228, 2301, 2302, 2032, 2064, 2564, 25128 . Chips & Technologies 82c45x, 65xxx, 643x0 WinGine . Chromatic Research Mpact! . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422/24/26/28/29 TrueColor VGA . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430/34/36, CL-GD5440/46 Alpine VGA . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5462/64/65 Laguna VisualMedia . Cirrus Logic CL-GD6205/15/25/35 LCD . Cirrus Logic CL-GD6410/12/20/40 LCD, CL-GD7541/42/43/48 LCD . Compaq IVGS/AVGA, QVision 1024/1280 . Diamond Viper P9000+W5186/OAK87 VLB and PCI . Everex Viewpoint ET4000 and Trident based boards . Genoa GVGA . Hualon 86304/14 . InteGraphics IGA1680/82/83, CyberPro 2000/2010 . Intel i740 . iXMICRO TwinTurbo 128, TwinTurbo 128+, TwinTurbo 128-3D . Macronix SuperVGA 86000/010/100/101/200/250/251 . Matrox MGA Atlas, Athena, Millennium, Mystique, Millennium II, Mystique 220, MGA-G100, MGA-G200 . NCR 77C21/22/22E/32BLT . NeoMagic NM2070/90/93/97, NM2160 LCD . Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2e, Ticket 2 Ride . nVidia nV1, SGS Thompson STG2000 (Diamond Edge 3D), RIVA-128 . OAK Technologies OTI-057/067/077/087, 64105/107/111/217/317 (Warp 5) . Paradise/Phillips Pipeline 9710/12 . Paradise/Western Digital W90C1x/2x/3x . Primus P2000 . RealTek RTG3103/3105/3106 . Rendition Verite V1000 . S3 86c911/924/80x/928, Vision 864/964/868/968, Trio32/64/64V+/64UV+/64V2, Aurora64V+, ViRGE, ViRGE/DX/GX/VX, ViRGE/GX2 . Sierra Falcon/64, SuperScalar 220 . SiS 86c201, 6202, 6205, 6326 . S-MOS SPC8106 LCD . Trident 88/8900, 90/91/9200, 9320LCD, 938xLCD, 94x0, 9660, 968x, 3DImage 975 . Tseng Labs ET3000, ET4000, ET4000/W32/W32i/W32p, ET6000, ET6100, ET6300 . UMC SuperVGA 85c408/18 . Video7 VEGA, HT208/209/216 . Weitek 5086/186/286, P9100 . Winbond W9970CF Cards Supported with Hardware Acceleration: ------------------------------------------- SciTech Display Doctor provides full hardware acceleration via SciTech Nucleus, Graphics Architecture device drivers. These are binary portable drivers that can run under any Intel x86 compatible OS. The initial version of SciTech Display Doctor contains full Nucleus support for the S3 Virge family of cards, but provides support for all other cards via a generic Nucleus driver that sits on the older VESA VBE/AF 2.0 interface supported by earlier versions of SciTech Display Doctor for DOS and Windows. Hardware acceleration features are provided for the following graphics chipsets. All cards listed above have functioning Nucleus drivers, but currently run in linear framebuffer, unaccelerated modes. . Alliance ProMotion 6410, 6422, AT24, AT25, AT3D . ARK Logic ARK1000VL/PV, ARK2000PV, ARK2000MT, Quadro64 . ATI Technologies 18800, 28800, Mach32,,Mach64, 3D Rage I/ II/ II+DVD/IIC, 3D Rage Pro . Chips & Technologies 65545/48/50/.54/55 . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5440/34/36, CL-GD5440/46 Alpine VGA . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5462/64/65 Laguna VisualMedia . InteGraphics IGA1680/82/83, CyberPro 2000/2010 . Intel i740 . iXMICRO TwinTurbo 128, TwinTurbo 128+, TwinTurbo 128-3D . Matrox MGA Millennium, Mystique, Millennium II, Mystique 220 . NeoMagic NM2070/90/93/97, NM2160 LCD . Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 1, II, IIb, IIc, IIe, Ticket 2 Ride . OAK Technologies 64105/107/111/217/317 (Warp 5) . S3 86c911/924/80x/928, Vision 864/964/868/968, Trio32/64/64V+/64UV+/64V2, Aurora64V+, ViRGE, ViRGE/DX/GX/VX, ViRGE/GX2 . SiS 86c201, 6202, 6205, 6326 . Tseng ET4000/W32p, ET6000, ET6100, ET6300 Cards Supported with SCI Serial Control Interface: -------------------------------------------------- This interface enables new types of communication between a graphics controller and a monitor, while making existing communications functions more modular. It allows Plug and Play information to be returned from the display in a standard way as well as enabling future applications that can control the properties of your monitor (brightness, contrast, centering and sizing) from your computer using the keyboard and mouse instead of via cryptic and hard-to-use On Screen Controls embedded in the monitor. Also note that the graphics chips listed below will be able to do Plug and Play monitor identification, if your monitor is also Plug and Play compatible. . 3Dlabs Permedia, Permedia 2 . Alliance ProMotion AT24/AT3D/AT25 . ARK Logic Quadro64 . ATI Technologies Mach64-CT/ET/VT/VT-B, 3D Rage I/ II/ II+DVD/IIC, 3D Rage Pro, 3D Rage LT Pro . Avance Logic 2564/25128 . Cirrus Logic 5436, 544x, 546x . InteGraphics CyberPro 2000/2010 . Intel i740 . iX Micro Twin Turbo 128, TwinTurbo 128+, TwinTurbo 128-3D . Macronix 86200/250/251 . Matrox Millennium , Mystique, Millennium II, Mystique 220, MGA-G100, MGA-G200 . Number Nine Imagine 128 Series II, IIb, IIc, IIe, Ticket 2 Ride . nVidia RIVA-128 . Oak Technologies OTI-64111, 64x17, Warp5 . Rendition Verite V1000, 2100, 2200 . NeoMagic NM2090/93 LCD . S3 Trio64V+/64UV+/64V2, Aurora64V+, ViRGE, ViRGE/DX/GX/VX/GX2 . SiS 86c201, 6202, 6205, 6326 . Trident 9440, 9660, 968x, 3DImage 975, 3Dimage 985 . Tseng Labs ET6000, ET6100, ET6300 Future features: ---------------- The following is a list of future features planned for the SciTech Display Doctor for Linux product. Note that these features may not necessarily be in the next release of the product, but they are features will likely appear in in future releases. If any of these features are especially important for you, we want to hear from you. Email us with your product suggestions to sddlinuxbeta@scitechsoft.com. . Lots more accelerated drivers with better performance . SVGAlib wrapper driver . Framebuffer (fbcon) driver for the forthcoming Linux 2.2 kernel . GGI and KGI drivers . Full multi-controller X11 support . Hardware video overlay support . Software Stereo LC Shutter Glasses support . 3D acceleration via SciTech Nucleus and OpenGL (Mesa) SciTech Software, Inc. 505 Wall Street Chico, CA 95928 (530) 894-8400 (530) 894-9069 FAX (530) 894-9047 BBS Web: http://www.scitechsoft.com Email: sddlinuxbeta@scitechsoft.com