On Jul 1, 2000 at 23:42:08, Romain Kang wrote:
>
> I bought Xi AcceleratedX a few days ago because I wanted gamma correction
> for my Diamond Stealth III S540 card (32 MB, Savage4) which didn't appear
> to be on the horizon for XFree86.
>
> Executive summary: Get Xi AcceleratedX if you really, really need some
> features and you know what you're getting into. I have found it to be
> a mixed bag, but it is useful to me. As a company, I think Xi Graphics
> has problems that could sink them if they don't get their act together.
>
> The web site (www.xig.com) definitely has its quirks. I used the 2D demo
> (limited to 10 minute runs) and was satisfied. I bought the license,
> tried installing it, and was rejected. Email to the support address
> brought a prompt, but cryptic response. I had to figure out for myself
> that the license key unlocked the *3D* demo. Fine, though it would have
> been nice to make this clear when I purchased the license. I still have
> some open issues with Xi support, which I will describe further below.
>
> The other unsettling aspect of the web site is that even though the order
> page uses HTTPS, somehow my credit card number leaked out. The very next
> day, I got a call from MBNA (who service the "Linux Fund" MasterCard)
> and they reported that four additional charges had been made against my
> card in the name of Xi Graphics. MBNA's rep spoke with Xi, and found
> Xi had no record of the additional charges; they cancelled the card and
> sent a new one on its way. In the years I have been using the Internet,
> this is the first time I've had this kind of problem. But hurray for
> Linux Fund and for MBNA.
>
> AX performs quite well in some respects. It supports 24-bit mode, which
> allows it to refresh at 70 Hz on my 1600x1200 display. XF86 has to do
> 32-bit, limiting it to 60 Hz. I thought the improvement was impressive.
> I felt the improved image quality with gamma correction was well worth
> the $29 I spent, in spite of the irritations I describe in this message.
>
> Then I tried running x11perf. AX delivered approximately 20% higher
> numbers than XF86. However, it locked the S540 when I got to the 10x10
> stippled rectangle (17x15 stipple) and some interesting screen corruption
> occured; the keyboard would not respond but I was able to rlogin. I could
> kill x11perf and the AX server, but could not get the console back, so
> I had to do an init 6 to get things working again. I tried it again,
> and the console locked at the same place. At least it didn't jam the
> whole system like the ATI Xpert 98 used to, which would have required
> a hard reset and a full fsck of all my disk partitions.
>
> There's other bad news. VMware's DGA extension is not yet supported
> under AX, and I could not get it to run; Xi support said that this would
> happen in the future, though a precise date was not known. Also, my
> Logitech cordless wheel mouse did not work. I tried the various mouse
> configurations that AX allowed, but none of them seemed to bind any
> useful events to the wheel (as shown by xev). One final annoyance was
> that when I tried to run xboing, Xlib had some fatal incompatibility
> with AX. (Hey, I have better things to do than play games on the
> computer). So I have implemented a wrapper script for startx that
> sticks in the XF86 or the AX server, depending on what I plan to do.
>
> As I said, these are open issues with Xi support. I'll write again if
> there's a happy ending.
>
> Romain Kang Siemens Info/Comm Products, San Jose R&D
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] formerly Pyramid Technology Corp.
>
> Disclaimer: I represent myself alone, except where otherwise indicated.
I just got a Diamond Stealth III S540 card running using XFree86 3.3.6
a couple of weeks ago. I had some problems getting this version of
XFree into RedHat 6.0 since the rpm from redhat creates dependency errors,
requiring other packages from 6.2 which aren't present in 6.0. I am
stuck at 6.0 for now until a driver appears in the 2.4 kernel for a
Promise Ultra ATA/66 IDE controller card. I ended up getting the 3.3.6
tarballs from XFree.org and installing these.
And there are problems with this driver at higher resolutions. The display
is a new one from Micron (forget the model) and it will run 1280x1024 with
the Savage4 driver but, there is an annoying vertical grey shadow on the
entire left side of the screen about 1" or so wide ). At 1152x864,
it is still present, but dimmer and more tolerable. At 1024x768 it is not
present. I tried 16 bit, 24 bit and 32 bit with no improvement w.r.t. the
shadow. I presume this shadow is a driver problem and not the monitor.
Is this related to "gamma correction"?
I am interested in Xig's drivers for this adapter card, but I may hang
on and see if XFree86 4.0 or later improves the Savage4 driver first. In
the meantime, I am using 1024x768 at 24 bits.
ed
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