mr@cica.cica.indiana.edu (Michael Regoli) (03/04/90)
][ I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor. The machine (z286lp) was shipped with one of those "brain-dead-EGA/VGA-compatible-cards- that-fail-miserably-in-VGA mode!" The machine is exclusively a Windows/PageMaker/WordPerfect 5.1 engine. Any comments on a good card will be appreciated! -- michael regoli mr@cica.cica.indiana.edu regoli@iubacs.bitnet ...rutgers!iuvax!cica!mr
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (03/06/90)
>I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a >Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor. The machine (z286lp) was >shipped with one of those "brain-dead-EGA/VGA-compatible-cards- >that-fail-miserably-in-VGA mode!" Try the new Paradise 1024 or Video 7 1024i. Fast and compatible. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow
jmerrill@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Confusion Reigns) (03/06/90)
In article <1640068@hpspcoi.HP.COM> dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) writes: >>I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a >>Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor. The machine (z286lp) was >>shipped with one of those "brain-dead-EGA/VGA-compatible-cards- >>that-fail-miserably-in-VGA mode!" > >Try the new Paradise 1024 or Video 7 1024i. Fast and compatible. There is no reason to use a 1024x768 card with the Zenith FTM, which is only capable of 640x480...although I've heard that it does that better than any monitor out there. -- Jason Merrill jmerrill@jarthur.claremont.edu "Jesus Saves...Gretsky recovers...He scores!"
liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) (03/07/90)
jmerrill@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Confusion Reigns) writes: >>>I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a >>>Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor... >> >>Try the new Paradise 1024 or Video 7 1024i... >There is no reason to use a 1024x768 card with the Zenith FTM, which is only >capable of 640x480...although I've heard that it does that better than any >monitor out there. Good point! Last year there was some talk of a true multisync version of the Zenith being developed. Does anyone have any concrete information about this? The current VGA-only monitor also makes a great room heater. :-) -- Jimmy Liberato ...!amdahl!drivax!liberato
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (03/08/90)
>>Try the new Paradise 1024 or Video 7 1024i. Fast and compatible. > >There is no reason to use a 1024x768 card with the Zenith FTM, which is only >capable of 640x480...although I've heard that it does that better than any >monitor out there. These two cards are among the fastest around. The Video 7 VRAM and the Wizard VGA boards are faster but also more expensive. Even if you cannot use the SuperVGA modes, the speed of these cards makes a noticeable difference in normal VGA modes. Danny Low Sunnyvale Personal Computer Division dlow@hpspcoi ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow HP4200/29 720-3622
rossp@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ross PORTER) (03/12/90)
In article <1640068@hpspcoi.HP.COM> dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) writes: >>I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a >>Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor. The machine (z286lp) was >>shipped with one of those "brain-dead-EGA/VGA-compatible-cards- >>that-fail-miserably-in-VGA mode!" > >Try the new Paradise 1024 or Video 7 1024i. Fast and compatible. > > Danny Low > "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" > Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley > HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow The Zenith FTM supports up to 640x480 -- no more, so the extended res feature of the Paradise 1024 or V7 1024i would go wasted. I would suggest a less expensive "standard VGA" card e.g. Hercules or Paradise's basic VGA boards. Note that you probably can't get a 16-bit basic VGA board (outside of Compaq's pricy card). Ross Porter rossp@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca
bdn@phobos.cis.ksu.edu (Bryan D. Nehl) (03/12/90)
>>>I'm looking for any recommendations on a nice VGA card to drive a >>>Zenith Flat Tension Mask (FTM) Monitor. The machine (z286lp) was >>>shipped with one of those "brain-dead-EGA/VGA-compatible-cards- >>>that-fail-miserably-in-VGA mode!" [Mention of overkill paradise killed :-) ] [talk about a good basic vga card, probably only 8bit deleted] I know that you can get some good 16bit basic vga cards. One local dealer sells a DFI-3000 VGA card for $130. It is an 16/8 bit video card has 256k video ram with no upgrade options. It will do 800*600*16, 640*480*16 and the standard vga modes. This card also works with all monitors, i.e. cga,ega,hercules, and vga. Hope this helps. Bryan. /* ========== kodiak%kodiakpc.uucp@phobos.cis.ksu.edu =============+ [ Big Bad Bear Beasties Inc. ][ Bryan Nehl ] [ kodiak@ksuvm.ksu.edu ][ bdn@phobos.cis.ksu.edu ] +___ ...!{rutgers|texbell}!ksuvax1!phobos.cis.ksu.edu!bdn _____ */
jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (03/13/90)
In article <2435@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca> rossp@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca (Ross PORTER) writes: >The Zenith FTM supports up to 640x480 -- no more, so the extended res >feature of the Paradise 1024 or V7 1024i would go wasted. I would >suggest a less expensive "standard VGA" card e.g. Hercules or Paradise's >basic VGA boards. Note that you probably can't get a 16-bit basic VGA >board (outside of Compaq's pricy card). There is a "Basic VGA" version of the ATI VGA Wonder card. I have never seen it advertized, but when I went to buy a no-name VGA card from a clone dealer in So. Calif., the card that I got was made by ATI, it had the same pc board as my VGA Wonder, minus some chips, and a paper sticker that said "Basic VGA" on the box. I'm not sure now, perhaps that board would not function in 16-bit mode, but it does have the AT bus fingers on it. In any case, it isn't supposed to work beyond the regular VGA modes, and so I never bothered to try it in any of the extended modes. I'm not sure what the price is. I think I paid $165 last summer for it, though it might have been less. Most likely it is the sort of thing that dealers keep in the back room to put into clones whenever the customer doesn't know the difference between basic vga and super vga, and it probably is pretty cheap wholesale. -- John Dudeck "You want to read the code closely..." jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.
UD130322@NDSUVM1.BITNET (03/14/90)
I highly recommend the ATI Wonder card for the flat screen monitor. I have the ATI 256K version and am using it with my 1490. The card is very fast and I have had no software problems. It is a good buy for around $260 (256K version) and comes with a mouse (good one too). Some mail order vendors do not carry the version with the mouse so you should ask when ordering. Good luck, Steve
nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (03/22/90)
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) posts... >>There is no reason to use a 1024x768 card with the Zenith FTM, which is only >>capable of 640x480...although I've heard that it does that better than any >>monitor out there. I just bought the Zenith 1492 and I love it. The contrast and sharpness are incomparably better than any other monitor I looked at. I'm using it with an ATI VGAWonder card, BTW. >These two cards are among the fastest around. The Video 7 VRAM and >the Wizard VGA boards are faster but also more expensive. Even if you >cannot use the SuperVGA modes, the speed of these cards makes a >noticeable difference in normal VGA modes. Info World did a comparison test of 20 16-bit VGA cards in their December 11, 1989 issue and found virtually no significant difference in the speed of any of the cards. The only exception was the Video 7 card, due probably to its dual-ported RAM, and this was only faster for ONE application they tested it on (I forget which one). Actually, none of this is surprising when you consider that VGA cards don't really DO very much. All of the real work is done by the CPU; VGA (and CGA and EGA) cards are basically dumb frame buffers. This fact is becoming even more of a problem now that resolutions are becoming higher, it represents even more work for the CPU. Back in EGA days when I first heard that IBM was coming out with a new graphics device I desperately hoped that they would define a REAL graphics processor that the CPU could offload some of the work to. It would not be real expensive, especially in mass production, to create a board which knows about coordinate systems and line-drawing algorithms, and graphics primitives and area filling. With a short FIFO, which would be kept fed by the CPU, a system like that would positively fly and you could use it to great advantage for everything from windowing to 3D graphics. Moreover, software to drive such a device would be much simpler than for VGA since the CPU would not have to be generating primitives at such a "primitive" level. NEC, Hitachi, Intel, and TI have had chips out for years which support such functionality. Instead, IBM came out with VGA, which is only incrementally better than EGA. I understand that TI is promoting their TIGA line, which is based on the 34020. I haven't seen anything about it, but based on the processor it probably is more like what I described. Unfortunately TI lacks the industry leadership needed to establish this as a major standard so 3rd party software support for it will probably be limited and production volume will probably never get up to the point where it gets real cheap. Does anyone know more about TIGA? Also some specialized companies like Matrox have hi-res boards complete with z-buffering but these are wicked expensive and don't much software support compared to the IBM standards. Now that PC's are entering the workstation-range of MIPS (33MHz 386's are 5-7 MIPS, 486's are claiming 10-15 MIPS) it's about time to get workstation-range graphics. Intelligent graphics processors are the way that workstations do it, and its the way PC's should (and eventually will) do it too. It's not a question of "if" but "when". How many more universally-supported low-end (CGA/EGA/VGA) standards or poorly-supported high-end standards will we have to endure before we get a universally supported high-end standard? ---Peter
mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) (03/22/90)
In article <495523d0.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) writes: > > Now that PC's are entering the workstation-range of MIPS (33MHz > 386's are 5-7 MIPS, 486's are claiming 10-15 MIPS) it's about > time to get workstation-range graphics. Intelligent graphics > processors are the way that workstations do it, and its the way PC's > should (and eventually will) do it too. It's not a question of > "if" but "when". How many more universally-supported low-end > (CGA/EGA/VGA) standards or poorly-supported high-end standards > will we have to endure before we get a universally supported > high-end standard? > BUT .... it is vitally important that the frame buffer be accessible to the main CPU. Otherwise there is going to be some fairly large set of things that the programmer wants to do that happens to be SLOW as molasses when done using whatever primitives the graphics processor supports. Try blits from memory to screen on a Silicon Graphics Iris IV, for example. A lot of the so-called high end graphics out there are really good only for very special purposes. Many, for example, do not have or, and, xor, etc drawing modes, or transparent colors. The EGA has all these. It is really a very powerful design. (Of course, you could have a coprocessor drive the same hardware...) Doug McDonald
nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (03/23/90)
mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) posts..
:> Now that PC's are entering the workstation-range of MIPS (33MHz
:> 386's are 5-7 MIPS, 486's are claiming 10-15 MIPS) it's about
:> time to get workstation-range graphics. Intelligent graphics
:> processors are the way that workstations do it, and its the way PC's
:> should (and eventually will) do it too. It's not a question of
:> "if" but "when". How many more universally-supported low-end
:> (CGA/EGA/VGA) standards or poorly-supported high-end standards
:> will we have to endure before we get a universally supported
:> high-end standard?
:>
:BUT .... it is vitally important that the frame buffer be accessible to
:the main CPU. Otherwise there is going to be some fairly large
:set of things that the programmer wants to do that happens to be
:SLOW as molasses when done using whatever primitives the graphics
:processor supports. Try blits from memory to screen on a Silicon
:Graphics Iris IV, for example.
True, but it doesn't have to be this bad. One approach is to
have a fast blt between the CPU's RAM and the display memory.
I'm not familiar with SGI's architecture so I don't know what
the issues are with them.
Probably a better approach is to map the display memory into
the processor's address space as they do now, but have a parallel
processor to do the graphics. If you want to draw a line on the
screen, instead of having the CPU do a Bresenham walk, or whatever,
and calculate and draw the pixels one-at-a-time, it would just
tell the coprocessor "draw a line from p1 to p2". The coprocessor
would do all the work and acess the display memory via DMA while
the CPU would start working on the next item. But there would
be nothing to stop the CPU from accessing the frame buffer directly
if it needed to. An improvement on this design is to map it into
the CPU's address space *when you need it*, or to selectively
map parts of it in.
Forcing the CPU to have to do all the work, on a pixel-by-pixel
basis as it does now will become a big problem as screen reso-
lutions get higher. 1024X768 is over 2.5 times as many pixels
as 640X480. And if users start expecting smooth-shaded or
hidden-surface-removed images for greater realism there's
almost no way this can be done with reasonable performance
with current PC graphics architectures.
---Peter
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (03/23/90)
> Info World did a comparison test of 20 16-bit VGA cards in their > December 11, 1989 issue and found virtually no significant difference > in the speed of any of the cards. The only exception was the Video 7 > card, due probably to its dual-ported RAM, and this was only faster > for ONE application they tested it on (I forget which one). PC Magazine in the April 10, 1990 issue has a comparison test of several SuperVGA cards. Their performance data showed a significant (10:1 in some cases) performance difference with the Video 7 VRAM coming in about the middle of the pack overall. Sometimes these comparison tests are testing the computer equivalent of a Ford Escort against a Corvette. It is difficult sometimes to determine if a computer product is intended to be a computer equivalent of a Escort or a Corvette. Is a 10MHZ 8086 intended to be in the same performance league as a 10MHZ 80286? There are manufacturers who seem to want you to believe that. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow
tt3x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (03/24/90)
In article <1640087@hpspcoi.HP.COM>, dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) writes: >> Info World did a comparison test of 20 16-bit VGA cards in their >> December 11, 1989 issue and found virtually no significant difference >> in the speed of any of the cards. The only exception was the Video 7 >> card, due probably to its dual-ported RAM, and this was only faster >> for ONE application they tested it on (I forget which one). > > PC Magazine in the April 10, 1990 issue has a comparison test of several > SuperVGA cards. Their performance data showed a significant (10:1 in > some cases) performance difference with the Video 7 VRAM coming in > about the middle of the pack overall. > > Sometimes these comparison tests are testing the computer > equivalent of a Ford Escort against a Corvette. It is difficult > sometimes to determine if a computer product is intended to be a > computer equivalent of a Escort or a Corvette. Is a 10MHZ 8086 > intended to be in the same performance league as a 10MHZ 80286? > There are manufacturers who seem to want you to believe that. > > Danny Low > "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" > Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley > HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow What were the results of the test and which video card was the fastest and which was the editor's choice? Bobby Li TT3X@VAX5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU
dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) (03/27/90)
>> PC Magazine in the April 10, 1990 issue has a comparison test of several >> SuperVGA cards. Their performance data showed a significant (10:1 in >> some cases) performance difference with the Video 7 VRAM coming in >> about the middle of the pack overall. > > What were the results of the test and which video card was >the fastest and which was the editor's choice? > >Bobby Li This issue is the current issue. It can be found at any news stand. This magazine also be found in just about any library. Why read a summary when you can go to the original source material? In fact I find the summary that PC Magazine and InfoWorld print in their comparison reports to be most UNuseful. Their criteria for select a Best Choice is sufficiently different from mine that half the time, I totally disagree with their recommendations. However the details in the actual reports are usually enough for me to make my own decisions. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP SPCD dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow