XF86_SVGA(1)

NAME
XF86_SVGA - SVGA X Window System servers for UNIX on x86 platforms

SYNOPSIS
XF86_SVGA [:displaynumber] [ option ] ...

DESCRIPTION
XF86_SVGA is an 8-bit PseudoColor, 16-bit TrueColor and 24-bit TrueColor server for Super-VGA cards. It is derived from the X386 server provided with X11R5. Note: 16-bit and 24-bit TrueColor are currently only supported for some Cirrus, ARK, Chips & Technologies, and Trident chips, the ET6000 and some ET4000W32 chips.

CONFIGURATIONS

The XF86_SVGA server supports the following popular SuperVGA chipsets in 256 color mode. Virtual resolutions up to (approximately) 1152x900 are supported, using (up to) 1Mb of display memory. The Western Digital WD90C33, some of the Cirrus chipsets, ARK, the Oak OTI087, the Chips & Technologies 65550 or 65554 and the ET6000 support up to 2Mb of display memory and virtual resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher. Some of the Cirrus and ARK chipsets also support 16bpp, 24bpp and 32bpp (truecolor) modes on certain configurations. Some Trident chips are supported at 16bpp. Some Chips & Technologies chipset also support 16bpp and 24bpp (truecolor) modes. The ET6000 and some ET4000W32i or ET4000W32p chips supports all color depths. Generic VGA cards are also supported at 8bpp 320x200 only. The Matrox Millennium supports all color depths. ATI adapters based on integrated controllers also support all colour depths.

    ATI:
        18800, 18800-1, 28800-2, 28800-4, 28800-5, 28800-6, 68800-3, 68800-6, 68800AX, 68800LX, 88800GX-C, 88800GX-D, 88800GX-E, 88800GX-F, 88800CX, 264CT, 264ET, 64VT, 264GT (a.k.a. 3D Rage), 264VT-B, 264VT3, 264GT-B (a.k.a. 3D Rage II), 264GT3 (a.k.a. 3D Rage Pro)

    Tseng:
        ET3000, ET4000, ET4000/W32, ET6000

    Western Digital:
        PVGA1, WD90C00, WD90C10, WD90C11, WD90C24A, WD90C30, WD90C31, WD90C33

    Genoa:
        GVGA

    Trident:
        TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000 TVGA9000i, TVGA9100B, TVGA9200CXr, TGUI9320LCD, TGUI9400CXi, TGUI9420, TGUI9420DGi, TGUI9430DGi, TGUI9440AGi, TGUI9660XGi, TGUI9680

    NCR:
        77C22, 77C22E

    Cirrus Logic:
        CLGD5420, CLGD5422, CLGD5424, CLGD5426, CLGD5428, CLGD5429, CLGD5430, CLGD5434, CLGD5436, CLGD5440, CLGD5446, CLGD5462, CLGD5464, CLGD6205, CLGD6215, CLGD6225, CLGD6235, CL6410, CL6412, CL6420, CL6440

    ARK:
        ARK1000PV, ARK1000VL, ARK2000PV, ARK2000MT

    RealTek:
        RTG3106

    Compaq:
        AVGA

    Oak:
        OTI067, OTI077, OTI087

    Avance Logic:
        AL2101, ALI2301, ALI2302, ALI2308, ALI2401

    Chips & Technologies:
        65520, 65530, 65540, 65545, 65546, 65548, 65550, 65554

    SiS:
        SIS 86C201, 86C202, 86C205

    MX: MX68000, MX68010

    Video7:
        HT216-32

    Alliance:
        AP6422

    Matrox:
        MGA2064W

    NVidia:
        NV1, STG2000

Accelerated support is included for most of the Cirrus chipsets, the Western Digital WD90C31 and WD90C33 chipsets, the Oak OTI087 chipset, Chips & Technologies, ARK Logic chipsets, the ET6000 and the ET4000/W32p. Accelerated 8bpp support for the ET4000/W32 (i and p) and ET6000 is implemented in a separate server (see XF86_W32(1)). Users of boards based on ATI's Mach8, Mach32 and Mach64 chipsets should refer to the XF86_Mach8(1), XF86_Mach32(1) and XF86_Mach64(1) manual pages, respectively.

OPTIONS
In addition to the normal server options described in the Xserver(1) manual page, XF86_SVGA accepts some more command line switches, as described in the XFree86(1) manpage.

SETUP
XFree86 uses a configuration file called XF86Config for its initial setup. See the XF86Config(4/5) manpage for general details. Here only the XF86_SVGA specific parts are explained.

This server requires a Screen section in the XF86Config file with the Driver entry set to svga.

Entries for the Device section in the XF86Config file include:

chipset "name"
    specifies a chipset so the correct driver can be used. Possible chipsets are:

    ATI:
        ati (See README.ati for other recognized names)

    Tseng:
        et3000, et4000W32, et4000W32i, et4000W32i_rev_b, et4000W32i_rev_c, et4000W32p, et4000W32p_rev_a, et4000W32p_rev_b, et4000W32p_rev_c, et4000W32p_rev_d, et6000

    Western Digital:
        pvga1, wd90c00, wd90c10, wd90c24, wd90c30, wd90c31, wd90c33

    Genoa:
        gvga

    Trident:
        tvga8800cs, tvga8900b, tvga8900c, tvga8900cl, tvga9000, tvga9000i, tvga9100b, tvga9200cxr, tgui9320lcd, tgui9400cxi, tgui9420, tgui9420dgi, tgui9430dgi, tgui9440agi, tgui9660xgi, tgui9680

    NCR:
        ncr77c22, ncr77c22e

    Cirrus Logic:
        clgd5420, clgd5422, clgd5424, clgd5426, clgd5428, clgd5429, clgd5430, clgd5434, clgd5436, clgd5446, clgd5462, clgd5464, clgd6205, clgd6215, clgd6225, clgd6235, cl6410, cl6412, cl6420, cl6440

    RealTek:
        realtek

    ARK:
        ark1000pv, ark1000vl, ark2000pv, ark2000mt

    OAK:
        oti067, oti077, oti087

    Avance Logic:
        al2101, ali2301, ali2302, ali2308, ali2401

    Chips & Technologies:
        ct65520, ct65530, ct65540, ct65545, ct65546, ct65548, ct65550, ct65554

    SiS:
        sis86c201, sis86c202, sis86c205

    Alliance:
        AP6422

    MX: mx

    Video7:
        video7

    Matrox: (you should not need to specify this)
        mga2064w

    NVidia:
        nv1, stg2000

    Generic:
        generic

Option "optionstring"
    allows the user to select certain options provided by the drivers. Currently the following strings are recognized:

    legend - for Sigma Legend ET4000-based boards. This option enables a special clock-selection algorithm used on Legend boards, and MUST be specified for these boards to function correctly.

    swap_hibit - for Western Digital/PVGA1 chipsets. Some Western Digital based boards require the high-order clock-select lead to be inverted. It is not possible for the server to determine this information at run-time. If the 9th clock in the list of clocks detected by the server is less than 30Mhz, this option likely needs to be set.

    hibit_low, hibit_high - for Tseng ET4000 chipsets. With some ET4000 cards, the server has difficulty getting the state of the high-order clocks select bit right when started from a high-resolution text mode. These options allow the correct initial state of that bit to be specified. To find out what the correct initial state is, start the server from an 80x25 text mode. This option is only needed if the clocks reported by the server when started from a high-resolution text mode differ from those reported when it is started from an 80x25 text mode.

    8clocks - for the PVGA1 chipset the default is 4 clocks. Some cards with this chipset may support 8 clocks. Specifying this option will allow the driver to detect and use the extra clocks.

    16clocks - for Trident TVGA8900B and 8900C chipsets. Some newer boards using 8900B and 8900C chipsets actually support 16 clocks rather than the standard 8 clocks. Such boards will have a "TCK9002" or "TCK9004" chip on them. Specifying this option will allow the driver to detect and use the extra 8 clocks.

    probe_clocks - for Cirrus chipsets. The Cirrus driver has a fixed set of clocks that are normally used. Specifying this option will force the driver to probe for clocks instead of reporting the built-in defaults. This option is for debugging purposes only.

    hw_clocks - for C&T chipsets. The Chips & Technologies driver will by default attempt to use programmable clocks for chips that support them. Specifying this option will force the server to use the limited number of fixed clocks supported by the hardware.

    clkdiv2 - for all chipsets using a set of discrete clocks (i.e. not using a programmable ClockChip or a ClockProg). With this option enabled, the SVGA driver can also use all the clocks mentioned in the clocks line divided by 2, presenting the server with twice as many clocks to choose from, especially in the low- and mid-range. This is useful for creating very low resolution modes like 320x200, because the lowest available clock on many cards (25.175 MHz) is too high to create a standard 320x200 mode. A few SVGA chips (S3, WD90cxx) don't support this option, causing a distorted screen.

    power_saver - This option enables the server to use the power saving features of VESA DPMS compatible monitors. Refer to the XF86Config(4/5) manual page for details of how to set the timeouts for the different levels of operation.

    noaccel - for Cirrus, WD, ARK, C&T, MGA and Tseng chipsets. This option disables the accelerated features for the clgd542X, clgd543x, clgd5446, clgd546X, wd90c24, wd90c31 and wd90c33, C&T, ARK, MGA and Tseng chipsets.

    no_pixmap_cache - for any chip that uses XAA for acceleration, which includes ARK, Cirrus, C&T, MGA, SiS, Trident 9440/9680, and Tseng chipsets. This disables the use of a pixmap cache by XAA.

    xaa_no_color_exp - for any chip that uses XAA for acceleration. This option disables the use by XAA of hardware color expansion features. If you see text rendering problems, try this.

    xaa_benchmarks - most useful for a chip that uses XAA for acceleration. This option makes the server perform and report the results of benchmarks performed at start-up of XAA acceleration primitives.

    fifo_conservative - for Cirrus chipsets 542x/3x/46/6x, oti087, and ARK. This option sets the CRT FIFO threshold to a conservative value for higher dot clocks. This slightly reduces performance, but may help in eliminating problems with ``streaks'' on the screen caused by video memory bandwidth contention during BitBLT operations

    fifo_aggressive - for Cirrus chipsets 542x/3x/46/6x, and oti087, and ARK. This option sets the CRT FIFO threshold to an aggressive value.

    slow_dram - for Cirrus chipsets 542x/3x/46, and Trident. This option sets the DRAM timings for slow DRAM chips.

    med_dram - for Cirrus chipsets 542x/3x/46 and Trident. This option sets the DRAM timings for medium-speed DRAM chips.

    fast_dram - for ET4000, ET6000 and Cirrus chipsets 542x/3x/46, and Trident. This option sets the DRAM timings for fast DRAM chips. Normally not recommended.

    no_2mb_banksel - for Cirrus chipsets. This option is required for Cirrus cards with 2MB of videoram which is in the form of 512kx8 DRAMs (4 chips) rather than 256kx4 DRAMs (16 chips).

    no_bitblt - for Cirrus and C&T chipsets. This option disables use of hardware BitBLT.

    no_imageblt - for Cirrus and C&T chipsets. This option disables use of CPU-assisted BitBLT functions.

    mmio - for Cirrus and C&T chipsets. This option enables memory-mapped I/O for BitBLT communication.

    linear - Attempt a linear mapping of the framebuffer into high memory. Currently only supported for some Cirrus and oti087 configurations, the ET6000, the ET4000W32p rev C and D and the ET4000W32i. Automatically selected (and hence the option is ignored) for the clgd5462 and clgd5464, C&T, NVidia, and the ARK chipsets. This is also true for Tseng chips, except for 8bpp modes, where this flag allows linear mapping to be forced (it defaults to banked mode at 8bpp).

    nolinear - Disable linear mapping. Useful for C&T, ARK and some Cirrus chipsets.

    med_dram, favour_bitblt, clgd6225_lcd, no_stretch, no_mmio - more Cirrus-specific options. Refer to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.cirrus for a detailed description of Cirrus options.

    ext_fram_buf, use_modeline, fix_panel_size, no_stretch, lcd_center, suspend_hack, use_18bit_bus - more Chips & Technologies specific options for use with LCD screens. Refer to <XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.chips for a detailed description of these options.

    hw_cursor - for ARK or ET6000 chipsets. This option enables the hardware cursor.

    sw_cursor - for Cirrus and C&T chipsets. This option disables the hardware cursor.

    sync_on_green - for Chips & Technologies 65550's and 65554's and Matrox MGA2064W's. This option enables the generation of a sync on green signal.

    pci_retry - for all accelerated Tseng chipsets. This option enables a "bus-hold" feature on the Tseng chip that will increase accelerator performance, but at the cost of long system bus blocking periods. This may cause bus timeouts for some ISA DMA hardware (soundcards, floppy tape drives, etc). Despite the name, this is not limited to PCI bus cards only.

speedup "selection"
    sets the selection of SpeedUps to use. The optional selection string can take the following values:

    none
    all

    If the selection string is omitted, or if the speedup option is omitted, the selection defaults to "all". Some of the SpeedUps can only be used with the ET4000, WD90C31 and WD90C33 chipsets and others requires a virtual resolution with a xdim of 1024. SpeedUps that won't work with a given configuration are automatically disabled.

nospeedup
    disables the SpeedUp code. This is equivalent to speedup "none".

Ramdac "ramdac-type"
    This specifies the type of RAMDAC used on the board. The ARK and ET4000W32i/p drivers use this. Refer to the chips-specific documentation for details.

TextClockFreq txtclk
    For some Chips & Technologies chipsets it is impossible to determine the clock used at the text console. The server therefore assumes that a 25.175MHz clock is being used. This can easily be wrong and corrupt the restored text console. This option allows the user to specify a clock that will be restored.

Note that XFree86 has some internal capabilities to determine what hardware it is running on. Thus normally the keywords chipset, clocks, and videoram don't have to be specified. But there may be occasions when this autodetection mechanism fails, (for example, too high of load on the machine when you start the server). For cases like this, one should first run XF86_SVGA on an unloaded machine, look at the results of the autodetection (that are printed out during server startup) and then explicitly specify these parameters in the configuration file. It is recommended that all parameters, especially Clock values, be specified in the XF86Config file.

FILES

<XRoot>/bin/XF86_SVGA
    The SVGA color X server

/etc/XF86Config
    Server configuration file

<XRoot>/lib/X11/XF86Config
    Server configuration file

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.ark
    Extra documentation for the ARK driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.ati
    Extra documentation for the ATI vgawonder driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.chips
    Extra documentation for the Chips & Technologies driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.cirrus
    Extra documentation for the Cirrus driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.MGA
    Extra documentation for the Matrox MGA driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.trident
    Extra documentation for the Trident driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.tseng
    Extra documentation for the ET4000 and ET3000 drivers

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.Oak
    Extra documentation for the Oak driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.Video7
    Extra documentation for the Video7 driver

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.WstDig
    Extra documentation for the WD/PVGA driver

Note: <XRoot> refers to the root of the X11 install tree.

SEE ALSO
X(1), Xserver(1), XFree86(1), XF86Config(4/5), xf86config(1), XF86Setup(1), xvidtune(1), xdm(1), xinit(1)

BUGS

Bug reports are welcome, and should be emailed to the address listed below.

CONTACT INFO
XFree86 source is available from the FTP server ftp.XFree86.org. Send email to XFree86@XFree86.org for details.

AUTHORS

Refer to the XFree86(1) manual page.