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<article>
<title>Information for Rendition Users
<author>The XFree86 Project Inc. Last updates by Dejan Ilic <it>&lt;dejan.ilic@home.se&gt;</it>
<date>1 August 1999
<toc>

<sect>Supported hardware <p>
All cards based on the V1000 or the V2x00 should be supported. The server
was tested on a miroCRYSTAL VRX (V1000), Intergraph Intense-100 3D (V1000), Diamond Stealth II S220 (V2100), Hercules Thriller3D (V2200) and Innovision Warrior3D (V2200).

<sect>Important notices <p>
V1000 cards can only work as primary display card due to hardware limitations. <p>
Some V1000-based videocards are known to lock up the computer if you have write-combine activated. Disabling it removes the problem. Look for settings in the motherboards BIOS and disable ALL settings that has to do with write-combine (usualy called USWC or just WC for short). <p>
The "chipset" option is now implemented and honored when used. Unfortunatly some legacy-code in the driver is preventing it from working with any cards but the primary display card. <p>
If you have problems with hardware cursor use the "sw_cursor" option to revert back to software cursor.

<sect>Features <p>
<itemize>
<item>Unaccelerated
<item>Hardware cursor
<item>Supported color depths
<itemize>
<item>8 bits per pixel (256 pseudo colour)
<item>15 bits per pixel (16-bits with RGB-weight 555, 32768 colors, V1000 cards only)
<item>16 bits per pixel (high colour, RGB-weight 565, 65536 colors)
<item>32 bits per pixel (true colour, sparse 24bit, 16M colors)
</itemize>
</itemize>

<sect>XF86Config options recognized and used by Rendition driver<p>
<descrip>
<tag>Option "sw_cursor"</tag>
Disables use of the hardware cursor.
<tag>Option "overclock_mem"</tag>
Run the memory at a higher clock. Useful on some cards with display glitches
at higher resolutions. But adds the risk to damage the hardware. Use with
caution.
<tag>DacSpeed "MHz"</tag>
Set custom ramdac limit. We have currently no way of knowing if the v2x00 chip is a v2100 (170MHz) or v2200 (203MHz and 230MHz) so we assume the lowest. Use this option to manualy override the value.
</descrip>

<sect>News in this release <p>
<itemize>
<item>XFree 3.3.x Rendition driver development discontinued in favour of XFree 4.0 driver.
</itemize>

<sect>Known problems in current driver<p>
<itemize>
<item>Displays with depth 15 ("-bpp 15" or "-bpp 16 -weight 555") are NOT supported on V2x00 cards. This is a hardware-"limitation" and has been confirmed by Rendition. The driver lets you display the mode but you will get a reddish display as the card is actualy in 565-weight while X thinks it should display weight 555.
<item>Switching from display to VC and back to display can lock up V2x00 cards.
<item>When scrolling the virtual display on a V1000 card parts of the screen will become distorted. Problem dissapears when you continue moving around. V2x00 does not exhibit this problem. Probably a bug in the driver rather than a limitation of the chip.
<item>Option "chipset" is honored. Unfortunatly the driver still has problems and will only work if the rendition card is the primary display card in the system.
<item>Switching to VC does not restore correct textmode. Instead it defaults to 80x25.
<item>A horizontal distortion around the hardware cursor can be seen on certain modes. It can be fixed by turning off hardware cursor or by lowering the required bandwith of the mode.
</itemize>

<sect>Work in progress<p>
<itemize>
<item> All future development, including acceleration, has been redirected to development of XFree 4.0 driver. No more improvments of XFree 3.3.x driver is planned for the moment.
</itemize>

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$XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/rendition.sgml,v 1.1.2.12 1999/10/13 21:46:27 hohndel Exp $
</verb>

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