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<title>Information for Oak Technologies Inc. Chipset Users
<author>Jorge F. Delgado Mendoza (<it>ernar@dit.upm.es</it>)
<date>27 February 1998

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<sect>Supported chipsets <p>

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:
<descrip>
<tag>OTI037C</tag>
        8-bit VGA chipset, with up to 256Kbytes of DRAM. All the 
        boards I have seen are only able to do standard VGA modes.
        (ie. up to 320x200x256 and up to 640x480x16). Currently the
        probe for this chip is disabled, so use the generic VGA
        driver instead.
<tag>OTI067</tag>
        ISA SVGA chipset, up to 512Kbytes of DRAM (usually 70/80 ns).
<tag>OTI077</tag>
        Enhanced version of the 067, with support for 1Mbyte and
        up to 65 Mhz dot-clock. This chipset is capable of resolutions
up to
        1024x768x256 colors in Non-Interlaced mode, and up to
        1280x1024x16 colors Interlaced.
<tag>OTI087</tag>
        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 features some acceleration hardware: 
        register-based color expansion, hardware cursor, 
        a primitive 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 capable of frequencies up to 78Mhz.
        This chipset supports up to 2MBytes of 70/70R ns DRAM.

<tag>OTI107 and OTI111</tag>
        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. 
        We have been unable to locate either 107's or 111's (also
        called "Spitfire 64111"). If anybody has such a board and
        can donate it to XFree86, I would be more than glad to add
        support for them. 
</descrip>

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.

<sect>XF86Config options <p>

The following options are of particular interest to the Oak driver. Each
of them must be specified in the 'svga' driver section of the
<tt>XF86Config</tt> file, within the Screen subsections to which they
are
applicable (you can enable options for all depths by specifying them in
the
Device section).

<descrip>
<tag>
Option &dquot;linear&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        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 <tt>XF86Config</tt> file or on
        the probed value for the board. It will speed up performance by
        about 15&percnt; 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.
<tag>
Option &dquot;fifo_aggressive&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        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&percnt; of
performance
        boost on a DX2-66 486.
<tag>
Option &dquot;fifo_conservative&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        This option will set the FIFO to a safe value of 14, slowing
        the board by a 50&percnt;, use this only if you experience
streaks or
        anomalies on the screen.
<tag>
Option &dquot;enable_bitblt&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        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&percnt;, (double BlitStones on xbench). Most
        OTI087 boards seem to have this feature broken, corrupting text
        from xterms and leaving mouse droppings throughout the
        screen. As a rule of thumb, enable it, if it works badly,
        disable it.
<tag>
Option &dquot;clock_50&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        This one will force the internal speed to 50 Mhz.
<tag>
Option &dquot;clock_66&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        This one will force the internal speed to 66 Mhz, speeding up
        performance of the chipset.

<tag>
Option &dquot;no_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        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.
<tag>
Option &dquot;first_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        Makes the VLB interface to add one wait state to the first
        read or write of a given burst.
<tag>
Option &dquot;first_wwait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        Similar to the previous one, this only inserts a wait state in
        the first 'write' of a given burst. reads are not
        affected. This is the default behaviour of the server.
<tag>
Option &dquot;write_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        This configures the VLB interface to add one wait state to
        each write cycle.
<tag>
Option &dquot;read_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        This configures the VLB interface to add one wait state to
        each read cycle.
<tag>
Option &dquot;all_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        Enables the slowest VLB transfer adding wait states in all
        cases. Hopefully, no board will need this enabled.
<tag>
Option &dquot;one_wait&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        Sets the VLB interface to at least one wait state.
<tag>
Option &dquot;noaccel&dquot; (OTI087)
</tag>
        One accelerated routine has been lately added to the driver,
        allowing 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.
</descrip>

As a rule of thumb, use the option "no_wait", and if it doesn't
result in corrupting text, lucky you. If not, try "first_wwait", and
downwards. ISA card owners should not use these options.

<sect>Mode issues <p>

    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 ability 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.

<sect>Linear addressing<p>

    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 all ISA boards, VLB ones work flawlessly.

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$XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Oak.sgml,v 3.12.2.2 1998/02/28 13:29:46 dawes Exp $





$XConsortium: Oak.sgml /main/8 1996/05/12 20:58:00 kaleb $
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