Subject: RE: video card

From: Thomas Pfenning <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 23:29:03 -0800

It is the Matrox Meteor. To answer the question about problems with the
Meteor and Pentium Pro machines. The Meteor has a known bug in the PCI
interface that is exposed by the Natoma chipset in PPro machines.
Someone found a hack around it by switching to a special packed data
format that does exhibit the malicious timing behavior but this really
sounds like a hack

However, it works just great on Pentiums.

Cheers

	Thomas

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Peter H. Tebault [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Wednesday, March 12, 1997 11:09 PM
> To:	Joao Carlos Mendes Luis
> Cc:	Daniel Gueniche; [email-masked]
> Subject:	Re: video card
> 
> Joao Carlos Mendes Luis wrote:
> 
>   #define quoting(Daniel Gueniche)
>   ; bonjour,
>   ;
>   ; Could someone recomend a video card for a PC with PCI bus under
>   W95, NT or
>   ; Linux, compatible with vat&nv or vic for use with mbone?
> 
>   Try the Matrox Meteor.  FreeBSD has support for it, to do exactly
>   what you want, and I know Linux has copied the driver.  Check it
>   first, but I think this is the only PCI solution 'til now.
> 
>                                           Jonny
> 
>   --
>   Joao Carlos Mendes Luis                 [email-masked]
>   +55 21 290-4698 ( Job )                 [email-masked]
>   Network Manager                         UFRJ/COPPE/CISI
>   Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
> 
>  Correction: Matrox Millenium
> 
> Peace,
> Pete
> --
> =============================================
> Peter H. Tebault, Student - [email-masked]
> fax 510 440 1770 ------ 1996 Neon Sport Coupe
> =============================================

---

From: Amancio Hasty <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 18:41:33 -0800

Hi Guys,

Till now the Matrox Metor or OmniMedia P1sc where pretty much the choice
for doing video stuff for FreeBSD and Linux. There is a bug with the 
Philips SAA 7116 and SAA 7196 based cards ( Meteor and P1sc cards) 
which when they do YUV12 dma transfer they lock  up a PPRO . 
The problem is a PCI incompatibility at the chip level. 
However there is a software work around if yuv packed mode is used as 
supposed to yuv planar mode which requires multiple dma transfers as
supposed 1 dma transfer per frame for yuv packed mode. 

Not too long ago I wrote a driver for Bt848 PCI cards which includes:
1. Intel Smart Video Recorder III
2. STB PC TV
3. Hauppauge's Wincast/TV

Additionally, the Bt848 PCI is fully PCI-2.1 compliant which the
Philips SAA 7116 is not -- in other words the Bt848 will not lock
up your system during yuv planar frame capture.

The bt848 driver is now part of FreeBSD 3.0-current so if you feel like looking
the driver is in /sys/pci . To linux enthusiasts if you like, it should
not be a big deal to port to linux -- minor point the Bt848 driver
mantains a high degree of compatibility with the FreeBSD Matrox Meteor
driver in fact I used the exact same ioctl interface.

You can get an older version of the driver with details about the driver
and module for vic :
ftp://rah.star-gate.com/pub/bt848-0.3.tar.gz

There is also a FreeBSD Bt848 project with links to applications such
dtv which does PCI to PCI transfer for very smooth video playback.
Applications which support the tuner found in the STB PC Tv or Hauppage's
Wincast/TV , Stand alone tuner, etc...

http://freebsd.org/~fsmp/HomeAuto/Bt848.html

The mailing list for ongoing multimedia or bt848 support for FreeBSD is:
[email-masked]

So what is the big deal about BrookTree's Bt848 based cards?

	They are cheap , cheap and then cheaper 8)
	And these babies can do 640x480 32bit at 30 fps with no sweat

	Actually you can have two in your system doing 640x480 16bit at
	30fps with no sweat 8)

Wincast has a model which sells for $100 .
The ones with tuner circuitry usually sell for $139 and up.

If you are interested on one of the above mentioned cards just surf the
web for the latest prices because I don't keep up -- I mean I bought my
Intel Smart Video Recorder III a few months ago .

	Have fun guys,
	Amancio