        #
        | README file for
        |
        | ELSA WINNER ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 Driver for NEXTSTEP,
        | ver 1.2A
        |
        |       WINNER 1000
        |       WINNER 1000PRO
        |       WINNER 1000AVI
        |       WINNER 1000PRO/X
        |
        |       WINNER 2000
        |       WINNER 2000PRO
        |       WINNER 2000PRO/X
        |
        | Copyright (c) 1994-96 ELSA GmbH, Aachen (Germany)
        |
        |                                     Subsidary:
        | ELSA GmbH                           ELSA Inc.
        | Sonnenweg 11                        2150 Trade Zone Blvd.
        | D-52070 Aachen                      Suite 101
        | Germany                             San Jose, CA 95131
        |                                     USA
        |
        | Phone      : +49-241-606-0         Phone: +1-408-935-0350
        | Support Fax: +49-241-606-6399      Phone:  1-800-272-ELSA
        | BBS (modem): +49-241-606-9800      Fax  : +1-408-935-0370
        | BBS (ISDN) : +49-241-606-9820      BBS  : +1-408-935-0380
        | CompuServe : GO ELSA               CIS  : GO ELSA
        | WWW        : http://www.elsa.de    WWW  : http://www.elsa.com
        |
        | 02/01/96, up, ol

        Table of Contents:

        1. Overview
        2. Disk contents
        3. Installation and Configuration
        4. Notes
        5. Known Problems


------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.      Overview

        This disk contains the ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 driver for
        NEXTSTEP and a conversion tool. The ELSA WINNER 1000/2000
        supports NEXTSTEP(R) for Intel(R) Processors, Release 3.2 and
        higher, a product of NeXT computer, Inc.

        This file contains an explanation of the installation process
        in chapter 3, as well as instructions for converting video
        modes which have been created using DOS based ELSA Tools. If
        your system is based on the ISA bus, reading of Chapter 6 is
        recommended.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.      Disk contents

        The software described here is located in directory
        "NEXT\STANDARD".

        That directory contains these files:

        WINNEXT.TAR     ELSA driver as unix tar file.
        VM2TIM.EXE      DOS based tool  for conversion of video modes
                        of a graphics board to a file format con-
                        forming to the NEXTSTEP software
        LIESMICH.TXT    german version of this file
        README.TXT      this file

        File versions are coded using the timestamp of a file. If e.g.
        a file is dated 04/22/94 1:10am, it is version 1.10. This driver
        is marked with a filetime of 1:29, since version number 1.2A cannot
        be coded as 1:2A.

        Hint:   opposed to DOS, file names and disk labels are all
                lower case in the NEXTSTEP software environment.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

3.      Installation and Configuration

3.1     Installation

        Hint:   Help on handling the workspace manager, diskettes,
                files and icons is found in the "User's Guide" (see
                "Literature", below).  You can also use Workspace
                Manager's Online Help (in the menu, go "Info->Help...
                ?").

3.1.1   Short instructions

        Copy the file WINNEXT.TAR to a local working directory and
        extract the tar file using workplace manager's archive
        inspector (double click->inspector->extract). Start Configure
        by a double click on the extracted "ELSA_install". Go on with
        "Configura- tion".

        Hint:   If your local working directory contains an old version
                of the ELSA software, remove it before beginning to
                install the new version.

3.1.2   Detailed instructions

        Insert the disk containing the driver into the drive. In the
        menu, choose "Disk->Check for Disks". A new icon showing a disk
        comes up in file viewer's shelf. Click it once, then double
        click on "NEXT" and "STANADARD" to change in the directory
        "NEXT\STANDARD".  Then select "winnext.tar". Move the icon
        named "winnext.tar" over your working directory's icon in the
        shelf.  When two squares show up, release the button. This
        copies the file to your working directory. The working
        directory might e.g.  be your home directory. Now click the
        working directory in the shelf, thus changing to that
        directory. Double-click the copy of "winnext.tar". An inspector
        shows up; extract the file, close the inspector. Two more files
        are there now: "ELSA_install" and "WINNER.config.tgz". A double
        click on "ELSA_install" will then start the Configure
        Application. If you are not logged in as root, you will be
        asked for the superuser password. In case an old version of the
        driver has been installed already, you will be asked for
        verification. Now go on with the Configuration process (see
        chapter "Configuration").

        Hint:   ELSA recommends to remove the files "winnext.tar",
                "ELSA_install" and "WINNER.config.tgz", in your working
                directory after installation, since they are not used any
                more then. To remove a file, select it and drag it over
                the recycler icon.

        In any case these files must be deleted before updating to a
        new version of the driver.


3.2     Configuration

        Hint:   Handling of the Configure application is explained in
                "Installing and Configuring NEXTSTEP Release 3.2 for
                Intel(R) Processors" (see "literature", below)

        If no display adapter had been installed before, a selection box
        shows up. Choose "ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 Display Adapter".

3.2.1   Short instructions

        The "Select..." button starts the "display mode selection"
        window. Here you have to declare which board of the WINNER
        1000/2000 series is installed in the system. Relevant here is
        the product name and the memory configuration. Following that
        step, a resolution and colorspace can be selected from a list
        of modes. In a third step, a the refresh rate to the current
        mode can be selected from a list.

        The box "technical information" shows hints; after resolution
        and refresh rate have been selected, the resulting line
        frequency and pixel frequency are showed here.

        Attention:      You must assure, that the monitor in use with
                        the system is appropriate to operate with the
                        line and pixel frequency shown in the
                        information box. An inappropriate monitor may
                        be damaged, when used with such a line or pixel
                        frequency. The maximum line and pixel
                        frequencies for a monitor are given in the
                        monitor manual.

3.2.2   Detailed instructions

        The window "Display  Devices" shows two address range selection
        boxes; the box "display mode selection" containing the button
        "Select..." and an icon "ELSA".

        Clicking the button "Select..." shows the "Card Selection
        Window". Please specify which one of the ELSA WINNER 1000/2000
        board series is installed in the system. Relevant are the
        product name and the memory configuration, i.e. how many mega-
        bytes of VRAM are on the board.

        Click on the button initially named "none". A popup list of
        boards shows up. Move the cursor up and down to the right
        specification.

        If your board's product name is not given precisely, the more
        general name is valid. For a WINNER 1000PCI with 2MB VRAM e.g.
        choose "WINNER 1000-2MB".

        Example:        A WINNER 2000PRO with 4 megabyte VRAM is
                        installed in the system. You choose "WINNER
                        2000PRO-4MB".

        Attention:      In case of a WINNER 2000VL with 2 megabyte VRAM
                        you must choose "WINNER 2000VL-2MB", NOT
                        "WINNER 2000-2".

        Be careful:     Only the correct board selection assures, that
                        the display modes you can select further on are
                        realizable on the installed board.

        When the board selection is done, you can specify a resolution
        and color space. This driver supports the following of the
        NEXTSTEP Windowserver's color spaces: "BW:8", which is 256 step
        grayscale, "RGB:555/16", which is 32768 colors (hicolor), and
        "RGB:888/32", which is 16.7 million colors (truecolor).

        Hint:   The decision about color space has implications on the
                memory demands the Windowserver will show. Since the
                Windowserver holds all the Windows in memory, keep in
                mind that one pixel costs you one byte in BW:8, two
                bytes in RGB:555/16, and four bytes in RGB:888/32. If
                you need color, RGB:555/16 will be good enough for most
                applications.

        For every resolution a refresh rate can be chosen. The box
        "Technical Information" shows the requirements to the used
        monitor, especially the line and pixel frequency must be lower
        than the maximum line and maximum pixel frequency specified for
        your monitor.

        Attention:      You must assure, that the monitor in use with
                        the system is appropriate to operate with the
                        line and pixel frequency shown in the
                        information box.  An inappropriate monitor may
                        be damaged when used with such a line or pixel
                        frequency.  The maximum line and pixel
                        frequencies for a monitor are given in the
                        monitor manual.

        The window "Card Selection Window" can be left by pressing the
        "OK" button thereby accepting the selections made so far, or by
        pressing the "Cancel" button, reestablishing the state that was
        valid before entering the window.

        If the WINNER card specification was changed or specified for
        the first time, framebuffer mapping will be changed according
        to the card chosen. An attention panel occurs.

        The box "Mapped Memory" shows the beginning and length of the
        area in address space where the board's video memory will be
        mapped into. Numbers are in hexadezimal notation. Usually, the
        value that was set when the board was chosen, will be ok.

        The specifications in the "Port Address" Box cannot be changed.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.      Notes

4.1     Release Notes

        Version 1.0  of 04/22/94 was the initial version

        Version 1.10:

        Supplies the WINNER 2000PRO-H and the high refresh truecolor
        modes on WINNER 2000PRO-4 boards.

        Bug fixes:      In version 1.0, only the first dynamic mode was
                        read in, if mode names were delimited by a
                        literal '\n'.  The "Dynamic Modes" entry is
                        read in correctly now.  In version 1.0,
                        problems could occur on some 50MHz VL bus
                        systems. Therefore VL-Bus handling was changed
                        slightly.

        Version 1.20:

        Supports RGB:444/16 modes on WINNER 2000PRO-2/-4/-H, supports
        RGB:256/8 modes on NEXTSTEP 3.3, handles the default memory
        address more user friendly, the original Cube's resolution of
        1120 x 832 was added.

        Bug fixes: Gamma correction is handled correctly now.

        Version 1.21:

        Supports the B release boards of the WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-8.

        Version 1.25:

        Supports WINNER 2000PRO/X-PCI-2/-4/-8 and WINNER 1000AVI.

        Version 1.27

        v1.25 plus support of RAMDAC RGB528-A

        Verson 1.28

        v1.27 plus support of RAMDAC AT&T 20C409

        Verson 1.29

        v1.28 plus support of WINNER 1000PRO/X-2

        Version 1.2A

        v1.29 plus support of WINNER 2000PRO/X Rev. G


4.2     Literature

        The handling of the Workspace Manager is explained in the
        "NEXTSTEP User's Guide" as well as in the online help. To get
        the online help, choose "Help... ?", which is a submenu of the
        "Info" item in the main menu.

        The Configure application has no online help, but is explained
        in "Installing and Configuring NEXTSTEP Release ... for
        Intel(R) Processors".

        The manuals mentioned are part of the NEXTSTEP product.


4.3     More graphics modes / conversion of graphics modes defined under
        DOS

        If you have created video modes under the DOS or Windows
        environment and want to used them as display modes in the
        NEXTSTEP environment, ELSA supplies a tool to do the conversion
        of EEROM data on the board to a format readable by ELSA's
        NEXTSTEP driver.

        Hint:   This sections requires a certain amount of knowledge
                and experience of the NEXTSTEP software environment.
                You will need superuser rights to be able to execute
                the steps that follow.

        The DOS based conversion tool VM2TIM.EXE, which is part of this
        package, prints out the video mode information in a ASCII text
        format that can be directly appended to the Instance0.table in
        the directory /usr/Devices/WINNER.config. After changing the
        "Display Mode" entry in that file to the required display mode,
        that mode will be used after the system has been rebooted.

        Proceed as follows:

        Create your monitor timings and store them into EEROM using the
        ELSA installation software.

        Then, still in the DOS environment, enter:

                "vm2tim -unix -o dmodes"

        A file "dmodes" is created which must be imported into the
        NEXTSTEP software environment, e.g. on a disk.

        In the NEXTSTEP environment:

        Log in as root and change to the directory
        /usr/Devices/WINNER.config. Copy the file dmodes to some place
        like e.g. /tmp/dmodes and enter

                "cat /tmp/dmodes >>Instance0.table"

        Then modify the file Instance0.table using an editor of your
        choice. Change the line beginning with "Display Mode" to the
        display mode you want to use.

        Example:        You want to use a mode with a resolution of
                        1216x940 at 75Hz, 256 grayscale. After
                        appending dmodes as explained, you find an
                        entry in Instance0.table

                "1216x940_75Hz_BW:8_ni" = "1216 940 8 (...)";

                Using the editor, now enter the line:
                "Display Mode" = "Height: 940 Width: 1216
                    Refresh: 75Hz bitsPerPixel: BW:8"

        If you have more than one of those modes and want to manage
        them just like the predefined ones, edit the file
        (boardname).modelist and insert a new line for each mode you
        want to add. Here is an explaining example:

        Example:        Supposed you have made the changes given in the
                        last example and now want to enter it into the
                        modelist so that it appears in the Card
                        Selection Window.  Suppose you use a WINNER
                        2000 with 4 megabyte VRAM.

                        Edit the file WINNER2000-4.modelist in the
                        directory /usr/Devices/WINNER2000-4.modelist.

            #
            # Width Height ColorSpace Refresh Flag (always 0)
            ...
                1152    864 RGB:555/16      91    0
                1280   1024 BW:8            75    0
            ...

            Just inserting the line

                1216    940 BW:8            75    0

            you get

                1152    864 RGB:555/16      91    0
                1216    940 BW:8            75    0
                1280   1024 BW:8            75    0

            and next time Configure is started, the Card Selection
            Window shows a new mode "1216x940 BW:8" between "1152x864
            RGB:555/16" and "1280x1024 BW:8" and refresh rate of 75 Hz
            can be selected for that mode.

            The last number in the line must be a "1" for interlaced
            modes.


4.4     444 gun depth

        When using 16 bits per pixel, the number of bits used to
        represent the red, green and blue color values respectively
        ("gun depth"), can be chosen differently as indicated by the
        "444" or "555" values in the colorspace name that is common in
        the NEXTSTEP environment. In an "RGB:555/16" color space, 16
        bits are used to represent one pixel. 5 bits are used to repre-
        sent the current of the red, green and blue electron gun of the
        cathode ray tube, respectively. The remaining bit is unused.
        Accordingly, in RGB:444/16 representation 4 bits are to code
        each color gun's signal values.

        On the WINNER 2000PRO-2,-4 and -H, the driver supports
        RGB:555/16 AND RGB:444/16 modes. Using RGB:444/16 colorspace
        results in driver speed advantage compared to RGB:555/16 modes.
        The reason is that the WindowServer internally uses a 444-gun
        depth when working in 16 bit mode. So this native format can
        just be put into the framebuffer, while using RGB:555/16 means
        data always has to be converted, before it can be sent to
        display memory.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.      Known Problems

5.1     SoftPC

        In case SoftPC by Insignia will not work properly, try the
        following modifications:

        1. This modification is not necessary, if youo are using
        NEXTSTEP version 3.3 and higher.

        In file /usr/Devices/Instance0.table change the line

            "Memory Maps"="0xMMMMMMMM-0xNNNNNNNN";
        to
            "Memory Maps"="0xMMMMMMMM-0xNNNNNNNN 0xa0000-0xbffff
                    0xc0000-0xcffff";

        (on one line; the Ms and Ns stand for any value you find here).

        2. In file .../SoftPC.app/video_types append this line:
            "WINNER" = "TextInterleaved";


5.2     Supported Bus systems

        The ELSA WINNER 1000/2000 driver for NEXTSTEP supports PCI, VL
        and EISA based boards. The usability of ISA based boards can
        not be granted. Problems may occur on systems which are
        equipped with more than 8 megabyte main memory. The technical
        background is discussed now:

        The ISA bus knows of 24 address bits spanning an address space
        of 16 megabytes size and corresponding to addresses
        0x000000-0xFFFFFF.

        The 80386 and later processors can access a 32 bit wide address
        space, i.e. 4 gigabyte corresponding to addresses
        0x00000000-0xFFFFFFFF.

        The display memory is mapped into CPU address space using
        segment 8 megabyte in size. You can specify the start address
        of that segment using Configure (see "Configuration"). As far
        as a system is equipped with more than 8 megabyte of main
        memory, this start address must be moved to beyond the 16
        megabyte boundary of the ISA bus.

        For the graphics board to be accessible here, the system must
        do accesses to the ISA bus even for addresses which are beyond
        that boundary. It is a property of the system which may vary
        from one system to another. The systems' behaviour is
        unspecified here.

        If such an access is done, only 24 of the CPU's 32 address bits
        are decoded. The state of the remaining 8 bits is oblivious.
        As a result, the graphics board seems to appear at multiple
        places in the address space, each occurance corresponding to
        one of the 256 state of the oblivious bits. On the other hand,
        conflicts with memory will not happen since the main memory
        serves CPU memory accesses before the ISA bus will initiate an
        access.

        Example:        An ISA bus based system is equipped with 24
                        megabytes of main memory and a WINNER 2000-4,
                        so main memory serves addresses
                        0x00000000-0x017FFFFF. The WINNER is configured
                        so that the display memory is mapped to
                        0x03800000-0x04FFFFFF.

                        The CPU now accesses 0x03800000. Main memory
                        does not serve that address, so an ISA bus
                        access is initiated.  Here on the bus, the
                        address reads as 0x800000, since there are only
                        24 address bits. The graphics card reacts to
                        the address and serves it.

                        Now the CPU accesses 0x00800000. The main
                        memory serves the address, an ISA bus access is
                        not even initiated.  The ISA bus thus is not
                        involved.


        This scheme works alright, as long as the system puts memory
        accesses beyond 16 megabyte that are not answered on the local
        bus e.g. by main memory on the ISA bus.  Since this is a
        property of the system that is not prescribed by specification,
        it may vary from system to system.

        On those ISA systems that do not comply to that scheme, display
        memory must fit into the first 16 megabyte. Since its mapped
        memory segment is 8 megabyte wide, only 8 megabyte remain for
        the systems main memory.

        Experience was made so far on a Compaq 66m (an EISA machine)
        and a no name VESA Local bus (VL) machine.  In those systems,
        the ISA boards worked well.  A test in a PCI based system was
        negative.

        Response on that issue is welcome. You may use the ELSA
        Bulletin Board System, the phone number is in your WINNER
        board's manual.
