Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 - Software News - News

Software News : Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200

Posted by orgin on 2008/3/15 19:55:19 (6479 reads) News by the same author

[15 March 2008]

Elbox Computer is pleased to announce releasing Mediator drivers for the Picasso96 gfx system for PCI graphic cards based on the ATI Radeon 9200 series chipset.

The Radeon 9200 series PCI cards features

- Dual integrated display controllers
- 64 or 128 MB of 64 or 128-bit 400MHz DDR SGRAM memory
- 400MHz integrated RAMDACs with refresh rates up to 200Hz
- resolution up to 2048x1536x32@85Hz
- two VGA, or one VGA and one DVI-I connector
- on board S-Video connector for TV-Out

Mission

The main goal of the releasing Mediator support for the Radeon 9200 series cards is a wide availability of these powerful, in-expensive, factory new cards in the PCI format.

Radeon Advantages

Apart from faster graphic engine, bigger memory compared with the Voodoo cards, the Radeon 9200s provide much faster PCI-to-PCI read accesses from their graphic memory. This feature results in increasing performance of the PCI busmaster cards (like Spider or FastEthernet), which use this memory for their DMA buffers.

Radeon Overlay Support

As the Elbox Radeon driver supports Radeon overlay function, the supported PCI TV tuner cards work on the Radeon screen in all PIP and backdrop modes (as shown at TV screenshots page) without any Amiga processor load.

Radeon & Voodoo cohabitation

The Radeon PCI card can be used in the Mediator systems together with the Voodoo gfx card, which allows work on two (or more) monitors simultaneousely. Here you can see the list of currently supported screen modes in this configuration. In Mediator systems where two gfx cards are installed (Radeon and Voodoo), all DMA buffers are automatically redirected to the Radeon card memory.

Compatibility

The Radeon Mediator drivers are designed for all MEDIATOR models. However, as most of the Radeon 9200 PCI series cards require the 3.3V auxiliary PCI power supply, they will work out of the box only in the Mediator 1200 TX and Mediator 1200 SX busboards with the ATX power supply.

PCI Radeon cards may also be used in other Mediator models, but it will require installing the Radeon card in the special PCI adapter which provides an auxiliary 3.3V power supply. Elbox is planning to produce a PCI 3.3V power adapter riser. It will include the bracket for the low profile Mobility Radeon 9200 card model available in Elbox Online Store.

Availability

The OS3.x Radeon Mediator driver will be available free of charge for all Mediator Multimedia CD registered users in the upcoming 1.28 update.

The comprehensive list of supported Radeon cards will be available at the Mediator Driver Guide.

Source:
http://www.elbox.com/news_08_03_15.html

The comments are owned by the author. We aren't responsible for their content.

Author	Thread
PEB	Published: 2008/3/15 22:50 Updated: 2008/3/15 22:50
Not too shy to talk Joined: 11/29/2006 From: Comments: 474	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Not to sound like too much of a whiner, and not to try and be too much off topic here, but as a uA1 owner, it is really discouraging to see that the classics equipped with the Mediator are able to use better graphics cards than us uA1 owners whose PCI slots are worthless for graphics cards. Some recent comments from Rogue that I read somewhere (can't remember where now), indicated that the OS4 developers were not going to look into fixing this problem (which apparently is a problem in UBoot); and this sure is frustrating. I really wish this issue could be resolved. Anyway (back on topic), congratulations to all you guys with Mediators!

nubechecorre	Published: 2008/3/16 1:38 Updated: 2008/3/16 1:38
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Sanremo Comments: 1899	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Thanks elbox for the support.. and hope that others developper will follow this road..

Antique	Published: 2008/3/16 1:52 Updated: 2008/3/16 1:52
Home away from home Joined: 11/30/2006 From: Norway Comments: 2628	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Good work

SimplePPC	Published: 2008/3/16 12:33 Updated: 2008/3/16 12:33
Just popping in Joined: 12/12/2007 From: Maldegem Comments: 36	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Its more likely to be a hardware problem, which means its unfixable. ALso a Radeon7000 is still a lot better then a Voodoo3

Rogue	Published: 2008/3/16 15:19 Updated: 2008/3/16 15:19
Quite a regular Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Comments: 624	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Quote: which apparently is a problem in UBoot It isn't a UBoot problem. The uA1 has the same fix that can be applied to the XE, and if that is done then the XE exhibits the same problems. I don't know what the problem is, but this makes me believe that this is a hardware issue, or alternatively some functionality changes that is not documented correctly and therefore out of my reach to fix. Besides, as I have pointed out, I have too much work on my hands already to work on unpaid projects. Plus, this is utterly off-topic here.

nubechecorre	Published: 2008/3/16 15:43 Updated: 2008/3/16 15:43
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Sanremo Comments: 1899	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 @Rogue Sorry i don't exactly understand what you said.. on mycro is impossible to use a pci graphic card ? or it need to be hardware fixed like the A1 XE, the famous hardware fix ?..

Rogue	Published: 2008/3/16 16:56 Updated: 2008/3/16 16:56
Quite a regular Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Comments: 624	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Currently, trying to use a graphics card in the MicroA1's PCI slot will not work. I had built an U-Boot 1.2.0 that could actually use both simultaneously but it will lock up in AmigaOS 4 as soon as the second graphics card is activated. I have a hunch what is going on, but no time to verify it and no intention to put any more work into it. And it is still off-topic.

nubechecorre	Published: 2008/3/16 17:48 Updated: 2008/3/16 17:48
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Sanremo Comments: 1899	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 OT Thanks for the info only one more question please The lock up happens if you wish to use 2 graphic card togheter, but can i use a pci graphic card instead of the inbuilt radeon 7000 on micro ? Thanks /OT

Rogue	Published: 2008/3/16 23:15 Updated: 2008/3/16 23:16
Quite a regular Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Comments: 624	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Quote: The lock up happens if you wish to use 2 graphic card togheter, but can i use a pci graphic card instead of the inbuilt radeon 7000 on micro ? I haven't tried that, but I don't think you can disable it. I could try add a switch to the kernel to skip it and see whether that makes using a PCI graphics card possible, but I don't know in how far the initialization worked in the current U-Boot. Really, if you want to discuss this further I propose opening up a thread in the forum, and not spam this topic with it.

nubechecorre	Published: 2008/3/16 23:43 Updated: 2008/3/16 23:43
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/24/2006 From: Sanremo Comments: 1899	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Ok thanks, i really appreciated

bamiga2002	Published: 2008/3/18 8:36 Updated: 2008/3/18 8:36
Just popping in Joined: 11/10/2007 From: Finland Comments: 78	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 This is good news. Now we have more juice to squeeze power out of our Mediators . Only if Elbox could make a special offer to trade all Mediator 1200 LT4's (including some amount of cash payment) to Mediator 1200 TX .

Comi	Published: 2008/3/18 15:47 Updated: 2008/3/18 15:47
Just popping in Joined: 12/01/2006 From: Zlatibor, Serbia Comments: 16	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 Will Hyperion prepre Warp3D for Radeon-Mediator combo like thy prepared for Voodoo-Mediator combo?

bamiga2002	Published: 2008/4/10 23:39 Updated: 2008/4/10 23:43
Just popping in Joined: 11/10/2007 From: Finland Comments: 78	Re: Elbox releases drivers for radeon 9200 I sure hope so or we'll lose the potential of a powerful graphics card. Using the Radeon purely for DMA-buffer sounds like raw power mostly wasted. Give us updated Warp3D-drivers that take true advantage of this Radeon card! (thank you...)