








                      Information for Tseng Chipset Users

     The XFree86 Project, Inc.  Dirk H. Hohndel, Koen Gadeyne and others.

                                  03 Nov 1998



1.  Supported chipsets

The Tseng chipsets supported by XFree86 are ET3000, ET4000, ET4000/W32 and
ET6000. Accelerated features of the ET4000/W32, W32i, W32p and ET6000 are sup-
ported by the SVGA driver. For details about the separate accelerated 8bpp
(=256 color) ET4000/W32 and ET6000 server, refer to README.W32.

Note that you should NOT be using XF86_W32 unless XF86_SVGA doesn't work on
your hardware. No further development is being done on the W32 server; all new
efforts go into the SVGA server.

Some ET4000W32 ISA cards are known NOT to work with the SVGA server in this
version (XFree86 3.3.1): they hang the machine... Use the W32 server XF86_W32
for these cards!


2.  Terminology

In the rest of this document, "8bpp" is short for "8 bits per pixel", which
means a 256-color mode. Similarly, 15bpp refers to 32768 colors, 16bpp to 65536
colors , 24bpp to a "packed" 16 million color mode, and 32bpp to a "sparse" 16
million color mode (at 32bpp, only 24 of the 32 bits are actually used, hence
the "sparse").

15bpp is only used here to differentiate it from 16bpp, but they are both nor-
mally referred to as 16bpp. 15bpp is actually 16bpp with a 5-5-5 color weight
(wasting one bit per pixel), while 16bpp is, well, 16bpp, with 5-6-5 color
weight.


3.  ET4000 driver features

The SVGA driver for ET4000 chipsets supports all color depths (8, 15, 16, 24
and 24 bpp) on most ET4000 chips starting with the ET4000W32i. The ET4000W32
only supports 8bpp. Depending on the RAMDAC and the support code in the SVGA
server, some cards may only support a few of these color depths, or even only
8bpp.

On W32i and W32p chips all color depths are supported on the supported RAMDACs
(currently ICS5341, STG170x and Chrontel CH8398). These modes are also acceler-
ated.

Some W32p board implementations are limited to 1 MB of video memory in linear
memory modes. This is a hardware limitation that cannot be solved in the


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driver. Since XFree86 requires linear memory for 16/24/32 bpp modes, the use-
fulness of these cards for highcolor and truecolor applications is severely
limited (those modes mostly use a lot of video memory).

In addition, those cards also don't support acceleration in linear mode.  This
is a design choice in the driver code: if acceleration were to be supported in
linear mode, you'd only be able to use 768 kb of video memory, and the driver
code would be twice as complex.

Cards with a RAMDAC that is not yet supported will be limited in a similar man-
ner as the older cards, i.e. to a maximum pixel clock of 86 MHz, whilst they
actually might be able to go up to 135 MHz. As a result, 1280x1024 modes will
only be possible when using interlacing, and non-interlaced modes are limited
to about 1024x768 at 75 Hz refresh.

For a non-interlaced 1280x1024x(256 colors) at say 135-MHz on a W32-type card,
you need a w32p (with its 16-bit RAMDAC bus) with a multiplexing RAMDAC so that
the w32p sees only (135/2 = 67.5) MHz, not 135 MHz. This requires special code
only provided for cards using the ICS5341 GENDAC, the STG170x or the CH8398.
This code seems to work fine for most people, except, with the ICS5341, for a
small band of frequencies around 90MHz.

Linear memory mode (especially important for some DGA clients, like xf86quake)
is supported on all ET4000W32i and ET4000W32p cards, but not on the ET4000W32.
See the section on linear memory for more information. There are some important
issues related to linear memory.

For the higher color depths (16, 24 and 32 bpp), linear memory mode is
REQUIRED. It is enabled by default in these modes. There is no need to specify
that in the XF86Config file. Please read the section on linear memory below: it
contains some vital information on how to avoid serious problems.

To force "banked" mode in 8bpp modes (where linear memory mode is the default),
put the following in the Device section of your XF86Config:

       Option "no_linear"

Acceleration support is present, and enabled by default, for all W32 and ET6000
family chips. This is based on the new XFree86 acceleration interface (XAA).

If you have problems with acceleration, acceleration can be disabled by putting
the following in the Device section of your XF86Config:

       Option "noaccel"

On some PCI systems (i.e. only on the ET6000 and the ET4000W32p), acceleration
may cause occasional font corruption. This is probably caused by a badly writ-
ten system BIOS that ignores the fact that the Tseng PCI devices have their
"non-prefetchable" attribute set. On such a BIOS, a PCI feature called "write
combining" (or "byte merging") is enabled for the Tseng video card, although it
is not permitted. Some systems allow you to manually enable or disable the
Write Combining feature in the BIOS setup (sometimes abbreviated to WC). Make
sure WC is disabled for the VGA memory aperture.









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If you experience font corruption on your system and are unable to manually
disable WC in your BIOS, font acceleration may be disabled using the following
in the Device section of your XF86Config:

       Option "xaa_no_color_exp"

Note that this will reduce the performance of the X server.


4.  ET6000 driver features

In addition to the features in the ET4000 driver, the SVGA ET6000 server sup-
ports all possible color depths in the SVGA server: 8bpp, 16bpp (both at 5-5-5
and 5-6-5 color resolutions), 24bpp and 32 bpp.

Linear memory mode (as opposed to the VGA default, banked memory layout) is
supported. It is required and enabled by default for the 16/24/32 bpp modes.
For 8bpp, the default is linear mode for PCI cards and banked mode for ISA/VLB
cards.

To force linear memory at 8bpp, put the following in the SVGA section of your
XF86Config:

       Option "linear"

Acceleration is supported and is enabled by default, and accelerates all color
depths on the ET6000. Acceleration can be disabled by adding the following in
the Device section of your XF86Config:

       Option "noaccel"

The hardware cursor is supported in all color depths. Due to a hardware limita-
tion in the ET6000, only a limited set of colors is supported (2 significant
bits per color component). This may cause some (small) cursor color errors. If
absolute cursor color accuracy is required, the hardware cursor should not be
enabled. However, in most applications, this will not be a problem. The hard-
ware cursor can be enabled using

       Option "hw_cursor"

There is a problem with the hardware cursor at high dotclocks (above approx.
110MHz) at which point the cursor does strange things when partly off the left-
hand side of the screen.

On older ET6000 chip revisions, DoubleScan modes currently don't work with the
hardware cursor: only the top half of the cursor is visible. If you want to use
DoubleScan modes (320x200 is a popular one), then do not enable the hardware
cursor. Most recent ET6000 cards and the ET6100 do not exhibit this problem.

On some PCI systems, acceleration may cause occasional font corruption. As
described above, this is caused by a bug in your system BIOS or a wrong setting
of the write combining feature in that BIOS. If you are unable to fix the BIOS
or force the option off, font acceleration may be disabled using the following
in the Device section of your XF86Config:








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       Option "xaa_no_color_exp"

When using accelerated high color-depths (24bpp and 32bpp), high-resolution
modes (starting somewhere around 800x600) may cause temporary "garbage" lines
to the right of the screen while the accelerator is busy. The garbage should
not be persistent: it should go away as soon as the server is left alone. This
is a memory bandwidth problem, and thus cannot be resolved (except by not
allowing such modes at all, which is what is done in the current driver).

Ignoring it is one option (it isn't destructive). Disabling acceleration in the
Device section of the XF86Config file is another option: since the accelerator
is not being used, there is ample bandwidth to avoid such problems.


5.  Clock selection problems with some ET4000 boards

XFree86 has some problems getting the clock selection right with some ET4000
boards when the server is started from a high-resolution text mode.  The clock
selection is always correct when the server is started from a standard 80x25
text mode.

This problem is indicated when the reported clocks are different when the
server is started from the high-resolution text mode from what they are when it
is started from the 80x25 text mode.  To allow the server to work correctly
from the high-resolution text mode, there are some Option flags that may be set
in XF86Config.  To find out which flags to set, start the server with the
-probeonly flag from an 80x25 text mode and look at the information printed by
the server.  If the line:

       VGAXXX: ET4000: Initial hibit state: low


is printed, put the following in the SVGA, VGA16 and VGA2 sections of your
XF86Config:

       Option "hibit_low"


If the line:

       VGAXXX: ET4000: Initial hibit state: high


is printed, put the following in the SVGA, VGA16 and VGA2 sections of your
XF86Config:

       Option "hibit_high"


6.  Text mode restore problems

In XFree86 1.3, an option flag ``force_bits'' was provided as an experiment to
attempt to alleviate text-restoration problems that some people experienced.
We have now made the behavior of this option the default, hence the flag has








 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                          5



been removed.  Hopefully the past text-restoration problems are alleviated in
XFree86 2.0.


7.  Basic configuration

It is recommended that you generate an XF86Config file using the XF86Setup' or
xf86config' program, which should produce a working high-resolution 8bpp con-
figuration. You may want to include mode timings in the Monitor section that
better fit your monitor (e.g 1152x864 modes). The driver options are described
in detail in the next section; here the basic options are hinted at.

If graphics redrawing goes wrong on accelerated chips (ET4000W32 and ET6000),
first try the "noaccel" option, which disables all accelerated functions.


8.  general options in the XF86Config file

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

      Option "noaccel"
            (ET4000W32p, et6000) This option will disable the use of any accel-
            erated functions. This is likely to help with some problems related
            to DRAM timing, high dot clocks, and bugs in accelerated functions,
            at the cost of performance (which will still be reasonable on a
            local or PCI bus).  This option applies only to those chips where
            acceleration is supported.

      Option "fast_dram" "slow_dram"
            These options set the DRAM speed of certain cards where it applies.

            The "slow_dram" option is always enabled on ET4000, and ET4000W32.
            If enabled, it slows down DRAM timing, which may avoid some memory-
            related problems. If your card starts up with a black screen (and
            possibly a system hang), this option might be needed.

            The "fast_dram" option will cause the driver to speed up DRAM tim-
            ings, which may also avoid screen-related problems (streaking,
            stripes, garbage, ...). It may also increase those very same
            effects.

            All in all, these are potentially dangerous options: they could
            crash your machine as soon as you start the server. Use them with
            caution.

      option "w32_interleave_off" "w32_interleave_on"   (W32i, W32p)
            Force memory interleaving off or on. W32i and W32p chips can
            increase memory bandwidth when they have 2MB or more video memory.
            Normally the VGA BIOS sets the W32i or W32p chip to the correct
            mode. If you suspect problems with memory sizing or interleaving,
            fooling around with these options may improve the situation. It may








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            also make things worse. These options are not normally needed: the
            server will use the correct value automatically. Setting this
            option the wrong way will result in a completely distorted display.

      option "pci_burst_off" "pci_burst_on"   (W32p)
            This option disables or enables PCI bursts on the W32p chip if it's
            a PCI card. Normally, a good BIOS will set the motherboard and the
            VGA card to the same setting, but if both don't match, you may
            experience garbage on the screen (e.g. mouse droppings). These
            options allow you to match the W32p burst setting to the mother-
            board setting.

      videoram 1024 (or another value)   (all chips)
            This option will override the detected amount of video memory, and
            pretend the given amount of memory is present on the card. This is
            useful on cards with 2Mbyte of memory whose DRAM configuration is
            not compatible with the way the driver enables the upper megabyte
            of memory, or if the memory detection goes wrong. It must be speci-
            fied in the Device section.

      Clockchip "et6000"  (et6000)
            This enables programmable clocks, but obviously only on the et6000.
            It must be specified in the Device section. Normally the server
            will automatically use this feature when it detects an ET6000. Use
            it only when you suspect auto-detection is not working. Note that
            some frequencies may be unstable (resulting in a `Wavy' screen).
            Only tried and tested frequencies (like the default clocks) are
            guaranteed to be stable. If this happens, try a slightly different
            frequency in the modeline (like 0.5 MHz more or less). The monitor
            should still be capable of syncing to this frequency, but the
            clockchip may already be outside an unstable region.

      Option "linear"  (ET4000W32i, ET4000W32p, ET6000)
            This enables linear addressing, which is the mapping of the entire
            framebuffer to a high address beyond system memory, making the full
            length of the framebuffer directly accessible. In this way, slow
            SVGA bank switching (where only a small fraction of the framebuffer
            is visible at one time) is not necessary. It enhances performance
            at 256 colors, and is currently required for 16bpp, 24bpp, and
            32bpp.

      MemBase 0xE0000000. (or a different address) (ET4000W32, ET6000)
            This sets the physical memory base address of the linear frame-
            buffer. It must be specified in the Device section. It may be
            required for non-PCI linear addressing configurations, and might be
            useful for PCI-based systems where auto-detection fails. However,
            almost all PCI systems will not need this.

            Read the section on linear memory base address issues below!

            Read the section on linear memory base address issues below!  (Mes-
            sage repeated for a very good reason)

            Use this option ONLY if you have trouble with the default MemBase








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            used by the server, or if the server explicitly states that you
            must provide one.

      Option "pci_retry" (ET4000W32p on PCI bus, ET6000)
            This enables the PCI bus retry function, which is a performance
            enhancing mode for local bus or PCI bus-based systems, where the
            VGA controller will put the bus in a hold state (sort of like wait-
            states) when the server tries to start a new accelerated operation
            but the accelerator is still busy with the previous operation.

            This is the fastest way to drive a VGA card (no busy-waiting loops
            needed), but it also stresses some hardware that is timing-depen-
            dent (tape drives, sound cards, etc). See also the trouble shooting
            section.


9.  linear memory base address (MemBase) issues

First a WARNING: defining a bad MemBase may cause serious injury or death (to
your operating system, of course). Especially defining the MemBase to be inside
the range of system memory is a ticket to hell.

9.1  What you should know BEFORE trying another MemBase

Rule #1: first, let the server find a memory base by itself, without specifying
it. Make sure you "sync" all files to disk and close all critical applications.
Make sure nothing bad will happen to your filesystems if you have to jump for
the power switch soon.

The most critical cards are the ET4000W32p rev a and rev b on VESA local bus
(VLB). The server will autodetect a linear base address that doesn't work on
all systems.

The least critical cards are PCI-bus cards. The PCI BIOS normally takes care of
assigning a good MemBase, and you should never have to deal with all the mumbo-
jumbo below.

If the server gets it wrong, you may end up with a severe system crash (e.g.
if it maps the video memory right on top of your system memory). If this hap-
pens, RESET IMMEDIATELY. Do not try to shut down cleanly, because the X-server,
thinking it writes to the VGA memory, will write to system memory instead, and
you'll be writing corrupted data to disk. If you did a sync prior to starting
the server, there will be no harm done (only a filesystem check which should
end up clean). DO NOT attempt to redirect the server output to a file on the
system you're testing on (that will write data after you synced).

These are worst-case scenarios, and it is very unlikely this will happen to
you. The text above is to make sure you are properly prepared, so that nothing
serious happens.

When the server can't find a working linear memory base, it's time to experi-
ment. The rest of this section deals with that.










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9.2  Choosing a MemBase

Choosing a suitable MemBase can be quite tricky. If you have no way of deter-
mining the MemBase your card uses, trying to put it a few Mb above the system
memory is a good first guess. E.g. if you have 16 Mb of RAM, defining MemBase
0x01000000 (=16M) or 0x01400000 (=20M) may work.

However, this may only work on non-PCI systems, as PCI systems mostly map all
hardware above the 2GB mark. But then again, on PCI systems the server is
almost always able to detect the correct linear memory base address. The only
exception are those systems with more than one PCI VGA card.

On most VESA local bus (VLB) boards, there is an additional problem with
address decoding. Most motherboards only decode the first 32, 64 or 128 MB of
address space (a good pointer is to check the amount of DRAM that can be
installed on the board: it will at least decode as much address space as it
supports DRAM).

On such boards, you MUST specify a MemBase inside that range, or the actual
address may wrap back onto system memory: if your system only decodes 128MB of
addresses, and you set the MemBase to 128 MB, it will actually be decoded as
being on address 0, which is probably exactly where your kernel memory is
located. That is why the general guideline of putting the MemBase just above
the system memory is a sound one: it stands most chance of actually being
inside the decoded address range of the board. Unless your motherboard's entire
memory space is filled with RAM.

9.3  An alternative approach

If you don't know how much memory address space your motherboard decodes (and
who does?), try using a "non-trivial" address, like 0x1FC00000, which has
enough bits set to "1" to work on any motherboard, even if a few are not
decoded. Keep in mind that using for example 0x10000000 may end up right on top
of your system memory if the motherboard doesn't decode all upper address bits.
You will only do that once.

9.4  When all else fails...

Some other VLB boards can only map the linear framebuffer above the 1GB mark
(0x80000000 and up), so you must use a MemBase that is higher or equal to
0x80000000.

Some other VLB boards can only map the linear framebuffer BELOW the 16 MB mark.
So you may want to try booting your system with up to 12 MB of memory (some
operating systems allow you to supply a boot-time parameter that limits the
memory to a certain amount, so you don't have to open your computer to try
this), and set the MemBase to 0x00C00000 (=12M).

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell what system you have (these details
are mostly not in the motherboard manuals). Trial and error is the only road to
success here. The server code will provide a default that works on most
boards... but yours won't be one of those, of course.










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9.5  Restrictions

There are some limits as to where the linear memory base may be put. On any
ET4000W32, it must have a 4MB granularity (i.e. it can be put at 16M or at 20M,
but not at 18M). On ET6000, it needs a 16M granularity (note: the ET6000 driver
should be able to determine the linear memory base automatically, so you should
never need to define MemBase in the first place).

On ET4000W32i, things are worse: the linear address base is hardwired on the
card, and there is no reliable way to read it back from the card. You need to
know the address in some way, and specify it. The current code does an intelli-
gent guess at it, but this is no guarantee.

On ISA cards, things are much more simple: ISA only uses 24 address lines, and
hence the linear memory MUST lie within the 16 MB boundary. Together with the
4MB granularity of the linear memory base address on ET4000 cards, this means
that you cannot have more than 12 MB of system memory in the machine if you
want to use linear memory. Hence, the only realistic MemBase for ISA cards is
0x00C00000. This is also what the server will automatically choose if it
detects an ISA W32 card.

WARNING: you must not have over 12 MB of system memory in this case. Or if you
have it, you must disable access to all memory above the 12 MB mark.  Some
operating systems allow you to specify at startup how much memory it is allowed
to use, so you don't have to unplug some memory each time you want to use lin-
ear memory.

9.6  Some boards simply cannot work in linear mode

Yes, and in that case, you're out of luck.

There can be at least two reasons for this.

The first is the most common: the board manufacturer has left out the necessary
connections and hardware to be able to use linear addressing. This means that
no coding effort on this planet can help you with your problem: it is physi-
cally impossible to use linear addressing.

The second reason is that the current XFree86 Tseng linear addressing code is
incompatible with the way your board is designed. The XFree86 Tseng code
assumes a 1:1 mapping of the address lines from the bus (either ISA, VLB or
PCI) to the address lines on the Tseng VGA chip. As unlikely as it may sound,
this may NOT be the case!

Some very rare boards do not have such a 1:1 mapping (e.g. two address lines
swapped). It is possible to support this type of hardware, but at this moment,
this has not been implemented yet.

Other boards use external address decoding hardware that combines a number of
address lines on the bus to a (smaller) number of address lines to the VGA
chip. One such board for example uses three NOR gates (one 74F02 chip) to com-
bine the 6 upper address lines to three address pins on the W32i chip.  Obvi-
ously, this represents a 2:1 mapping, and not a 1:1 mapping. Therefor, this
board is not "compatible" with the way XFree86 implements linear mode.








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9.7  How can I see if the linear address is wrong?

Simple: nothing works, or your machine locks solid, or it crashes, or a zillion
of other things.

However, sometimes it is not always as obvious. Sometimes nothing bad happens:
you just get a black screen, or a screen with rubbish on it, but nothing is
drawn on it. Sometimes you get a core dump when the first application starts.

If acceleration is enabled in those cases, you will almost always see multiple
"WAIT_ACL: timeout" messages in the server output. That is because the acceler-
ator registers are also mapped in the linear memory, and if linear memory
doesn't work, then also the accelerator doesn't work.

NOTE however that a WAIT_ACL message doesn't necessarily mean the linear memory
address is bad. There are a number of other reasons for this message as well.
But if you never saw these messages at 8bpp banked, then there's a good chance
you have a linear memory problem ("banked" is the opposite of "linear", and is
the default mode when "option linear" is not in the XF86Config file).


10.  Mode issues

The accelerated driver on ET4000W32/W32i/W32p and ET6000 needs at least 1K
bytes of scratch space in video memory. Consequently, if you want acceleration,
a 1024x1024 virtual resolution should not be used with a 1Mbyte card. This also
means that a 1024x768 mode at 24bpp on a 2.25 MB ET6000 card cannot be acceler-
ated, since you've used up all the memory for the display.

The same thing goes for the ET6000 hardware cursor: it also requires 1kb of
free video memory. If that memory is not available, the hardware cursor cannot
be used.

The use of a higher dot clock frequencies has a negative effect on the perfor-
mance of graphics operations on non-et6000 cards (the effect is much less, or
even non-existing, on ET6000 cards), especially BitBlt, when little video mem-
ory bandwidth is left for drawing. Memory bandwidth is the speed at which data
can be pumped into the memory while the RAMDAC is pulling it out to display it
on the screen.

Higher dot-clocks (mostly related to higher resolutions) consume more band-
width, so that less of it is left for drawing into the framebuffer. With a
working accelerator, things become increasingly crammed, because modern accel-
erators can consume huge amounts of bandwidth (but they also give you high
speeds in return). High color depths also need extra bandwidth.

If you are short on memory bandwidth (see the separate section on this) and
experience blitting slowness or screen "glitches", try using the lowest dot
clock that is acceptable; for example, on a 14" or 15" screen 800x600 with high
refresh (50 MHz dot clock) is not so bad, with a large virtual screen.

Tseng chips are mostly known for their (very) good memory bandwidth, so you
should only start to see problems in the higher regions.









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It does not make much sense performance-wise to use the highest clock (85 MHz)
for 1024x768 at 76 Hz on a 1 MB ET4000W32; the card will very slow, because
there is almost no bandwidth left for drawing. A 75 MHz dot clock results in 70
Hz which should be acceptable. If you have a monitor that supports 1024x768 at
76 Hz with a 85 MHz dot clock, an 1MB card is a poor match anyway.

The ET4000W32i and ET4000W32p have a special feature that almost doubles memory
bandwidth (+70%) using "interleaving" between the two banks.  Upgrading to 2MB
is a real bonus on these cards. This is not true for W32 cards or for ET6000
cards.


11.  Acceleration issues

The XFree Acceleration Architecture makes extensive use of the unused video
memory on the VGA card. If there is not enough free video memory, some acceler-
ation features will be disabled or crippled, resulting in less performance.

To avoid this from happening, try to keep an absolute minimum of 16 kb of free
memory, in addition to the 1kb already reserved by the accelerator.

In practice, this small amount of memory should not be a problem. Most cards
nowadays have 2 MB of video memory, and running 1280x1024 still leaves plenty
of memory unused. Even a 1600x1200 desktop will leave over 170kb unused, which
will then be used by the accelerator to enhance performance.

Most 1MB cards cannot display modes larger than 1024x768 with a decent refresh
rate, leaving 256kb unused.

The order in which free memory is used to accelerate certain features is as
follows.

If no video memory is unused (i.e. all of it is used for display memory), no
acceleration can be used at all -- not even a hardware cursor on the ET6000.

If the hardware cursor is enabled (ET6000 only) and there's at least 1kb of
free video memory, 1kb is used for that.

If there is at least 1kb of free memory remaining after this, most acceleration
features are enabled as well, reserving an extra 1kb of video memory.

If there's still some free memory, some extra acceleration features are
enabled. These require more free video memory, depending on the virtual screen
width and the color depth (bpp). The server will print out how much memory it
used if it could.

If there's still some free video memory, it is used as a pixmap cache. This
way, small patterns and images can be kept in the video memory so that they
don't need to be transferred into the video memory each time they're needed.
This is beneficial because transferring an image over the bus to the video mem-
ory takes a lot more time than letting the accelerator blit it from the pixmap
cache to the display memory.










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12.  ET6000 memory size facts and fiction

The ET6000 uses a special kind of video memory called MDRAM (multi-bank DRAM).
It may have a non-power-of-two amount of MDRAM: 2.25 or even 4.50 MB.  Espe-
cially 2.25 MB MDRAM is popular, since this can support 1024x768 at 24bpp with-
out needing 4MB of RAM.

There are a few less intuitive problems with this.

First of all, All memory above the 4 MB limit is a waste of money, because the
ET6000 cannot use this memory for anything at all. There are boards with 4.5 MB
around, but that extra 0.5 MB is a waste. The ET6000 can only refresh 4 MB of
(M)DRAM (refresh register). It can only access 64 banks of 64KB in VGA mode
(bank select register). All accelerated commands use a 22-bit address (=4MB)
inside the video memory. You get the idea... There is no way for the ET6000 to
use anything above the 4Mb limit.

And Secondly (more importantly): you may not have 2.25 MB at all! There have
been several reports about ET6000 cards that were sold with (supposedly) 2.25
MB of MDRAM, but which turned out to be standard 2MB MDRAM cards.  People have
been having trouble with these all along, since sometimes the X-server used to
detect this as 2.25 MB (or even 2.5 MB) due to internal chip design and also
due to faulty BIOSs. This memory detection problem has been fixed now, and the
server should detect the correct amount of memory.

Do NOT define the amount of memory in the XF86Config yourself, unless you are
absolutely sure about the amount.

There is a simple way to determine the amount of MDRAM on your card beyond
doubt.

Look at the video card. There is one large chip with 204 pins on it, which is
the ET6000. One socketed rectangular chip, mostly with a sticker on it,is the
BIOS. The remaining big chips are (mostly) 2 or 4 other large square chips on
it with the following markings:

MDRAM MD9xy     ("xy" is a two-digit number) SJ-5-100  (this may differ, but it
will have the same layout)

and a nice logo next to all that with 4 diamonds and the name "MoSys" under-
neath.

The "xy" number tells you how much MEGABITS there are in that one chip.

The amount of RAM on the card is then:

("xy" * number_of_MDRAM_chips) / 8    Mbytes

On my board, there are two MD908 chips, which means I have

(08 * 2) / 8 = 2 MB of MDRAM.

Boards with two MD909 chips have 2.25 MB, etc.









 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         13



Current MDRAM chips are MD904, MD906, MD908, MD909, MD910, MD916, MD918 and
MD920.


13.  ET6000 memory bandwidth hype and the impact on video modes

Tseng has always had wet dreams about memory bandwidth, and their press
announcements about the ET6000 memory bandwidth are no exception.

They claim the ET6000 using MDRAM is capable of reaching an incredible 1.2
Gbytes/sec of bandwidth. That would surpass just about everything on the market
(even SGI).

And that would be true, _if_ they actually used the fastest available MDRAMs on
their boards, which they don't. The stunning 1.2 GByte mark is only reached
when using 4 MDRAM chips at their max clock rate of 166 MHz. But due to design
limitations, the first-generation ET6000 can only drive the memories at 92 MHz
(that will change when the ET6100 and ET6300 hit the streets).

This means the max. theoretical bandwidth available on current ET6000 boards is
"only" 360 MB/sec on boards with 2 MDRAM chips, and 720 MB/sec on boards with 4
MDRAM chips. And this assumes a best-case situation (=extremely long bursts --
the MDRAMs use a shared address/data bus, much like the PCI bus does). In the
real world, unaligned accesses both from the PCI bus and the accelerator will
reduce the effective available bandwidth. The current ET6000 boards peak out at
about 225 MB/sec, with 2 or 4 MDRAMs.

Whatever you may have read in press releases, the ET6000 has a 32-bit memory
bus (not 128 bits; that's only the accelerator data path within the chip, if
anything). That means that, with their 16-bit busses, 2 MDRAM chips already use
the full bus capacity. Having 4 memory chips on an ET6000 board will not give
you extra memory bandwidth.

Memory bandwidth limits the maximum resolution you can use at a given color
depth. The ET6000 RAMDAC can cope with 135 MHz in any situation. But the RAM
cannot. At 32bpp (sparse 16M color mode), using a 135 MHz pixel clock would
require a memory bandwidth of 135*4 = 540 MB/sec, which the current ET6000
boards simply cannot cope with. And then you still need some spare bandwidth
for the PCI bus and the accelerator.

That is why some modes will be refused, depending on your MDRAM memory layout,
even if the amount of memory would permit such a mode. See also the trouble
shooting section to see what can happen if too little memory bandwidth is
available.


14.  Linear addressing and 16bpp/24bpp/32bpp modes

Currently the 16-bit (32768 or 65536 colors), 24-bit (16M colors, packed
pixel), and 32-bit (16M colors, sparse) pixel support in the SVGA server
requires linear addressing. This restriction may be removed in a future ver-
sion, but with nearly all new cards using the PCI bus (where linear addressing
poses no problem), removing the linear addressing requirement presently has a
lower priority than other features. Option "linear" can be specified in a








 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         14



depth-specific screen section to enable linear addressing; a MemBase setting
(in the device section) is probably also required on non-PCI based systems, and
optionally on PCI systems that have trouble finding out for themselves where
the MemBase is.

Non-PCI cards are not (or not well) supported in linear memory mode at this
moment. Some of them don't support it at all, and some of the ones that do have
so many address decoding bugs that it isn't feasible to provide a working solu-
tion.

For the most part, many of the accelerated features in the 8bpp server have
been implemented to support 16, 24, and 32 bpp modes for the W32 and the
ET6000. So although there are now up to 4 times as many bits to display, the X
server shouldn't feel overly sluggish. Note also that the 24bpp and 32bpp modes
are only supported on a limited set of cards, and with at least 2Mb of memory.

An ET6000 with 2.25 MB MDRAM is cheap-and-sound, since it can support exactly
1024x768 at 24bpp (using all available video memory). On all other video cards,
you need at least 4MB of video memory to do this. With only 2MB of (M)DRAM,
960x720 is the best you can hope for.

In the XF86Config "Screen" section, a "Display" subsection must be defined for
each depth that you want to run, with separate Modes and virtual screen size.
Example (2Mb of video memory):

     Section "screen"
         SubSection "Display"
             Depth 8
             Virtual 1280 1024
             ViewPort 0 0
             Modes "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768"
         EndSubSection
         SubSection "Display"
             Depth 16
             Virtual 1024 992
             ViewPort 0 0
             Modes "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768"
         EndSubSection
         SubSection "Display"
             Depth 24
             Virtual 960 720
             ViewPort 0 0
             Modes "640x480" "800x600"
         EndSubSection
         SubSection "Display"
             Depth 32
             Virtual 832 600
             ViewPort 0 0
             Modes "640x480" "800x600"
         EndSubSection
     EndSection











 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         15



15.  Trouble shooting with the SVGA Tseng driver

First of all, make sure that the default modes selected from your XF86Config
are supported by your monitor, i.e. make sure the horizontal sync limit is cor-
rect. It is best to start with standard 640x480x256 with a 25.175 MHz clock (by
specifying a single horizontal sync of 31.5) to make sure the driver works on
your configuration. The default mode used will always be the first mode listed
in the modes line, with the highest dot clock listed for that resolution in the
timing section.

Some general hints:

   o Put Option "slow_dram" in the Device Section.

   o Put Option "pci_burst_off" in the Device Section.

   o Put Option "w32_interleave_off" in the Device Section.

   o Take out the Hercules monochrome adapter, if you have one.  Many configu-
     rations of the ET4000/W32 series do not allow one in the system.

   o Get a motherboard with its local bus running at 33 MHz.  Many, if not all,
     ET4000/W32 boards will surely behave in a funny way on a 50-MHz bus.  You
     may have to use a wait state or two, but first try without any.

   o Cold-boot your machine.  Do not run anything that messes with the video
     hardware, including other X servers, before running XF86_SVGA.

   o In case of an ET6000 card, try specifying chipset "et6000" in the Device
     Section. The card normally auto-probes from the PCI bus, but on some sys-
     tems, another on-board VGA card, although disabled, may cause the ET6000
     server to want to use the other card.

Note that some VESA standard mode timings may give problems on some monitors
(try increasing the horizontal sync pulse, i.e. the difference between the mid-
dle two horizontal timing values, or try multiples of 16 or 32 for all of the
horizontal timing parameters).

      There is a video signal, but the screen doesn't sync.
            You are using a mode that your monitor cannot handle. If it is a
            non-standard mode, maybe you need to tweak the timings a bit. If it
            is a standard mode and frequency that your monitor should be able
            to handle, try to find different timings for a similar mode and
            frequency combination.

      Horizontal jitter at high dot clocks.
            This problem shows up especially when drawing operations such as
            scrolling or blitting are in progress. There is currently no easy
            fix for this, You can try the "fast_dram" option, or use a lower
            dot clock. If that is not sufficient, the "noaccel" option will
            almost always help (it leaves more bandwidth for the RAMDAC). In
            most cases, this is caused by the video memory not being able to
            provide pixel data to the RAMDAC fast enough, so it gets fed with
            garbage.








 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         16



      `Wavy' screen.
            Horizontal waving or jittering of the whole screen, continuously
            (independent from drawing operations). You are probably using a dot
            clock that is too high; it is also possible that there is interfer-
            ence with a close MCLK. Try a lower dot clock (sometimes even drop-
            ping it by 0.5 MHz may work). You can also try to tweak the mode
            timings; try increasing the second horizontal value somewhat.
            Here's a 65 MHz dot clock 1024x768 mode (about 60 Hz) that might
            help:

                  "1024x768"     65      1024 1116 1228 1328     768  783  789  818

      Crash or hang after start-up (probably with a black screen).
            Try the "noaccel" option. Check that the BIOS settings are OK; in
            particular, disable caching of 0xa0000-0xaffff. Disabling hidden
            DRAM refresh may also help.

            On Linux systems, if "APM" (power management) support is enabled in
            the kernel, the server may start up in power-save mode or with a
            black screen. Rebuild your kernel with APM support disabled.

      Crash, hang, or trash on the screen after a graphics operation.
            This may be related to a bug in one of the accelerated functions,
            or a problem with the BitBLT engine. Try the "noaccel" option.
            Also check the BIOS settings.

      `ACL: TIMEOUT' messages from the server.
            Same as for the above entry. However, on some systems, the problem
            will not go away no matter what you do. It may be related to the
            operating system you use (it has only been seen on Linux systems,
            and even then it depends on the kernel versions). Sometimes, choos-
            ing another MemBase may help.

      Occasional erroneous pixels in text, pixel dust when moving window-frame
            Probably related to MCLK setting that is too high (can happen with
            linear addressing even though banked mode runs OK). Most (if not
            all) ET6000 cards are sold with the MCLK slightly over clocked for
            performance (the current norm is 90 or 92 MHz), which may cause
            these problems. There is currently no fix for this. If the pixel
            dust is only temporary (it disappears as soon as nothing moves on
            the screen anymore), then memory bandwidth is probably the cause.
            The only solution is to disable acceleration, or, if that doesn't
            help, using a lower pixel clock.

      Textmode is not properly restored
            This has been reported on some configurations. Sometimes a Chipset
            line will fix this. Normally you should be able to restore the
            textmode font using a utility that sets it (setfont, runx, restore-
            font on Linux).

      Mostly black or blue screen when using accelerated driver features
            If you are seeing a mostly black or blue screen, with only a few
            icons (pixmaps) displayed, this section applies to you.









 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         17



            There can be several causes for this.

            One is if the amount of memory is not detected (or specified) cor-
            rectly. If the server's autodetection mechanism detects too much
            memory, accelerated features will not work. Define the amount of
            memory in the XF86Config file. This seems to happen sometimes on
            some 2.25 MB ET6000 cards, where the server detects 2.5 MB instead
            (add videoram "2304" in this particular case).

            If that doesn't help, disabling acceleration (option "noaccel") is
            the only solution.

      Problems with DMA hardware (floppy, tape)
            On some systems, the accelerated server will interfere with other
            hardware that uses ISA DMA. Most notably is the PC floppy con-
            troller and sound cards. The floppy interface cannot cope with
            inordinately long bus-holds, which may occur during large acceler-
            ated operations.  The Linux-ftape module for example (a floppy-tape
            driver) will generate lots of "write error" messages when running a
            backup or restore operation while the X-server is in use. These
            errors should not be fatal, but that all depends on how well the
            operating system handles these conditions. Linux seems to cope.

            There are two possible solutions: disable acceleration using the
            "noaccel" option, or disable PCI-retry (which is causing the large
            bus delays) by removing the "pci_retry" option.  This will cause a
            very small slowdown of accelerated operations.

            The "pci_retry" option applies not only to the PCI bus systems, but
            has a similar effect on other busses.

      "Cannot read colourmap from VGA.  Will restore with default"
            If this error occurs, the server was unable to properly initialize
            the RAMDAC, and tries to restore a default color map. On some
            unsupported RAMDACs, this will have the adverse effect of removing
            all color altogether, leaving you with a bunch of weird colors, or
            with a completely black screen. If that happens, add the ramdac
            "normal" statement to the Device section in your XF86Config file.
            In most cases, this will solve the color problem.

      Why does the server report my ModeLine with only half the pixel clock?
            For ET4000W32p cards at 8bpp, some modes using a clock over 75 MHz
            (e.g. a 1152x910 mode with 95 MHz pixel clock) will produce the
            following message in the Xserver output:

            (--) SVGA: Mode "1152x910" will use pixel multiplexing

            And later, when the accepted modelines are reported:

            (**) SVGA: Mode "1152x910": mode clock =  47.500

            This is normal, because with pixel multiplexing, only half the
            clock is needed as two pixels are sent to the RAMDAC per clock
            pulse.








 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         18



For other screen drawing related problems, try the "noaccel" option.

If you are having driver-related problems that are not addressed by this docu-
ment, or if you have found bugs in accelerated functions, you can try contact-
ing the XFree86 team.

In fact, reports (success or failure) are very welcome, especially on configu-
rations that have not been tested. You can do this via the BetaReport form
(mail it to report@XFree86.org). You may want to keep an eye on forthcoming
beta releases at www.xfree86.org.


16.  Acknowledgments

Most of these stem from the old XF86_W32 server. That code was used extensively
for getting the SVGA server to work on all the Tseng cards, so they are still
somewhat valid.

Glenn G. Lai wrote the original XF86_W32 server. It was modified by Dirk Hohn-
del and Koen Gadeyne to support some more hardware.

Jerry J. Shekhel (jerry@msi.com) gave me (GGL) the 1-M Mirage ET4000/W32 VLB
board on which the initial development (X_W32) was done.

X11R6 and The XFree86 Project provide the base code for XF86_W32.

Hercules Computer Technology Inc. lent me (GGL) a 2-M Hercules Dynamite Pro VLB
board for the development that led to XF86_W32.   They donated a Dynamite Power
PCI to The XFree86 Project, that was used by DHH to extend the server.

Tseng Labs kindly donated (KMG) an ET6000-based board (a Jazz Multimedia G-
Force 128), which spurred the development of the ET6000 code. They also pro-
vided an ET6100 evaluation board.

Heiko Eissfeldt provided an ET4000W32p_rev_b board which allowed us to get bet-
ter support for those rev_a and rev_b boards.

Gyorgy Krajcsovits donated an ET4000W32p + CH8398 board. A Really Good Move!

Numerous testers have given me feedback for X_W32 and later XF86_W32.  I apolo-
gize for my failure to keep track of the people who tested X_W32, but the names
of the people involved with the XF86_W32 testing are listed below:

      Linux:
            bf11620@coewl.cen.uiuc.edu (Byron Thomas Faber)

            dlj0@chern.math.lehigh.edu (David Johnson)

            peterc@a3.ph.man.ac.uk (Peter Chang)

            dmm0t@rincewind.mech.virginia.edu (David Meyer)

            nrh@philabs.Philips.COM (Nikolaus R. Haus)









 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         19



            jdooley@dbp.caltech.edu (James Dooley)

            thumper@hitchcock.eng.uiowa.edu (Timothy Paul Schlie)

            klatta@pkdla5.syntex.com (Ken Latta)

            robinson@cnj.digex.net (Andrew Robinson)

            reggie@phys.washington.edu (Reginald S. Perry)

            sjm@cs.tut.fi (M{kinen Sami J)

            engel@yacc.central.de (C. Engelmann) use cengelm@gwdg.de

            postgate@cafe.net (Richard Postgate)

            are1@cec.wustl.edu (Andy Ellsworth)

            bill@celtech.com (Bill Foster)

      FreeBSD:
            ljo@ljo-slip.DIALIN.CWRU.Edu (L Jonas Olsson)

Several people have developed code for the SVGA Tseng driver (this list is
incomplete):

   o Glenn G. Lai

   o Dirk H. Hohndel

   o Koen Gadeyne

   o OEyvind Aabling

   o Dejan Ilic

   o Mark Vojkovich

   o Harald Nordgard Hansen

   o David Bateman

   o Gyorgy Krajcsovits

   o Kurt Olsen

     Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/tseng.sgml,v 3.15.2.18 1998/11/13 13:00:48 dawes Exp $





     $XConsortium: tseng.sgml /main/6 1996/10/27 11:06:09 kaleb $









 Information for Tseng Chipset Users                                         20





































































                                   CONTENTS



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

2.  Terminology  ............................................................ 1

3.  ET4000 driver features  ................................................. 1

4.  ET6000 driver features  ................................................. 3

5.  Clock selection problems with some ET4000 boards  ....................... 4

6.  Text mode restore problems  ............................................. 4

7.  Basic configuration  .................................................... 5

8.  general options in the XF86Config file  ................................. 5

9.  linear memory base address (MemBase) issues  ............................ 7
    9.1 What you should know BEFORE trying another MemBase .................. 7
    9.2 Choosing a MemBase .................................................. 8
    9.3 An alternative approach ............................................. 8
    9.4 When all else fails... .............................................. 8
    9.5 Restrictions ........................................................ 9
    9.6 Some boards simply cannot work in linear mode ....................... 9
    9.7 How can I see if the linear address is wrong? ...................... 10

10. Mode issues  ........................................................... 10

11. Acceleration issues  ................................................... 11

12. ET6000 memory size facts and fiction  .................................. 12

13. ET6000 memory bandwidth hype and the impact on video modes  ............ 13

14. Linear addressing and 16bpp/24bpp/32bpp modes  ......................... 13

15. Trouble shooting with the SVGA Tseng driver ............................ 15

16. Acknowledgments  ....................................................... 18














                                       i


