








                     Information for Trident Chipset Users

                           The XFree86 Project, Inc.

                               25th October 1998



1.  Supported chipsets

The Trident driver has undergone some slight work for XFree86 3.3.3.  Because
of this work, all of the Trident SVGA chipsets, except the very first one, are
supported by both the color and monochrome servers.

     8800CS 8200LX 8900B 8900C 8900CL/D 9000 9000i 9100B 9200CXr 9320LCD
     9400CXi 9420 9420DGi 9430DGi 9440AGi 9660XGi 9680 ProVidia9682 Pro-
     Vidia9685 Cyber9382 Cyber9385 Cyber9385-1 Cyber9388 Cyber9397
     Cyber9520 3DImage975(PCI) 3DImage975(AGP) 3DImage985(AGP)


It must be noted that the 9000i chipset is treated as a 9000 by the server.
Additionally the 9100B is treated as a Trident 8900CL. Therefore it is equiva-
lent to putting `Chipset "tvga8900cl"' or `Chipset "tvga9000"' in the XF86Con-
fig file.  Also, note that the 9000i, 9100B have not been tested with the
server, but should work in this way according to the chipset documentation.

 NOTES:

   o  The chipset keyword changed in XFree86 v3.3.2 and now you no longer spec-
     ify 'tgui96xx' as the generic keyword, but you actually specify your chip.
     i.e. Chipset 'tgui9685' will set a ProVidia9685 chip.

   o  The Cyber9388/9397, 3DImage975 and 3DImage985 cards are fixed in XFree86
     v3.3.3, these chipsets have some acceleration now too.

   o  24bpp is all drivers remains unaccelerated, this will change in a future
     version, although 32bpp acceleration is supported for all TGUI based
     chipset except the 9440 which doesn't have the capability.

   o  16bpp is now supported for the Cyber9320 chipset.

           Option "nolinear"
                 Turn off linear mapping

           Option "linear"
                 Force linear mapping.  Use this if you have a non-PCI card and
                 require 16bpp support.  Note: ISA cards can only access up to
                 16MB of memory, so be sure you have less than this or it could
                 cause a system hang.

           MemBase 0x???????
                 This option may be used to specify the start address of the


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 Information for Trident Chipset Users                                        2



                 linear frame buffer. By default for VLBus/EISA cards it is at
                 60MB.  For the 8900CL/D, it is at 15MB.

           Option "no_mmio"
                 This option turns off Memory Mapped IO support.  MMIO is
                 enabled by default when acceleration is enabled.  Acceleration
                 doesn't work well when MMIO is disabled.

           Option "tgui_pci_read_on"
                 Turn on PCI burst read mode.

           Option "tgui_pci_write_on"
                 Turn on PCI burst write mode.  NOTE: PCI Burst modes are now
                 OFF by default. The reason for this is the Graphics Accelera-
                 tor gets upset, but we allow you to turn it back on it may
                 improve performance, or lock up the chip with Timeouts dis-
                 played.

           ClockChip "tgui"
                 Turn on programmable clocks.  This is the default for TGUIs.

           Option "no_program_clocks"
                 Turn off programmable clock. Use fixed VGA clocks only.  Use-
                 ful for fixed frequency monitors - usually used for VGA moni-
                 tors - not SVGA.

           Option "noaccel"
                 Turn off XAA acceleration.

           Option "xaa_no_color_exp"
                 Disable color expansion.

           Option "no_stretch"
                 Disable LCD stretching on Cyber 938x based chips.

           Option "lcd_center"
                 Enable LCD centering on Cyber 938x based chips.

           Option "cyber_shadow"
                 Enable Shadow registers, might be needed for some Cyber
                 chipsets. (laptop machines)

           Option "tgui_mclk_66"
                 Pushes the Memory Clock from its default value to 66MHz.
                 Increases graphics speed dramatically, but use entirely at
                 your own risk, as it may damage the video card.  If snow
                 appears, disable. Only tested on the 9440.

The original Trident chipset, 8800BR, cannot be supported as an SVGA chipset by
either the color or monochrome servers.  The chip is supported, however, by the
``generic'' driver for the monochrome server.











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2.  Special considerations for 512k boards

There are no longer any special considerations for 512k Trident boards.  The
driver is now configured so that they can use modes with normal timings.  The
available pixel clocks are halved compared with those specified on the Clocks
line

Be aware that older Trident chipsets support a maximum clock of 65Mhz.  Hence
the best actual clock available to the color server is 32.5Mhz.  This means, in
broad terms, that the color server will require an interlaced mode to be
defined for resolutions above 640x480.  Newer chipsets (8900CL, 9000, 9000i,
9100B, 9200CX and 9420) support up to 16 clocks, and can support much higher
clocks, which will allow 800x600 modes, non-interlaced.


3.  Additional Notes

We have had reports of the server failing to detect the amount of installed
memory and the correct dot-clocks on older TVGA8900 boards.  If the server
fails to detect the correct amount of memory, use the "Videoram" keyword in
your XF86Config file to specify it.  (e.g. Videoram 512 or Videoram 1024).  If
the server has problems detecting the dot-clocks, try adding the following line
to your XF86Config file:

             Clocks  25 28 45 36 57 65 50 40


This line gives the clock values provided by older Trident clock synthesizer
chipsets.  This also appears to be the standard first 8 clocks for the newer
clock synthesizers, but you should have no problems on newer boards.

Some newer Trident 8900B/C boards are apparently being built with the clock
synthesizers used on the 9000 and 8900CL boards.  If your board has a chip
labeled "Trident TCK900x" ("x" has been seen as 2 or 4; there may be others),
your board may actually have a 4th clock select bit.  The 9002 has twelve dis-
tinct clocks (the other 4 are duplicates); the 9004 has 16 clocks (the same 12
as the 9002 + 4 others).  If you see such a chip on a board with an 8900B or
8900C, put the following line in the Device section of your XF86Config file:

             Option "16clocks"


This will cause the same clock selection code as is used for the 8900CL to be
used for the board.

While developing the Trident driver, an interesting and perturbing hardware
phenomenon was discovered.  When using the default board jumper configuration,
dot-clocks above 57Mhz would frequently lock up the machine.  There appear to
be jumpers on all of the Trident boards that determine whether the board will
operate in zero-wait-state mode on the ISA bus.  Disabling the zero-wait-state
mode via jumpers cured the lockups, but at the expense of performance.  Whether
or not a given system will experience this problem is likely a combination of
(a) bus speed, (b) video memory speed, and (c) dot clock speed.  So be prepared
for this phenomenon to occur, and have the board documentation handy.








 Information for Trident Chipset Users                                        4



NOTE: VLBus cards are also subject to the above. By specifying the Clocks in
the XF86Config file, these lockups are overcome. But it may be worth checking
wait states etc. on the card and in the BIOS setup.

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                                   CONTENTS



1. Supported chipsets  ...................................................... 1

2. Special considerations for 512k boards  .................................. 3

3. Additional Notes  ........................................................ 3















































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