On Sat, 12 May 2001, Chris Tribo wrote:

> On Sat, 12 May 2001, Vance Dereksen wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I still want the relative speed.  Just because a PMAGD-BA doesn't boot
> > under NetBSD doesn't mean it isn't fast.  Just because a PMAGB-BA doesn't
> > accelerate under NetBSD, it doesn't mean that it can't accelerate at all.  
> > I need useful information regarding the hardware's capabilities.  Come on.
> 
> 	Oh you want information regarding the hardware's capabilities? Try
> doing a search for PixelStamp on the web using 18 different search engines
> and tell me what you come up with. Zip, zilch, nada. There isn't a single
> shred of documentation released on anything relating to PixelStamp, and
> seeing how it was desigined in the 1980's it's a little hard to come
> by. Surely you don't think DEC actually published performance specs on
> these cards do you? The classified all information regarding
> PixelStamp as company confidential, and was never released, only
> snipets of the Xserver source were ever seen by the public AFAIK. What
> kind of hardware capability information do you want? Let me do a little
> rundown of the information on the model support page + a little more.
> 
> PMAG[A]-A mfb Dumb linear mono FB
> PMAG[A]-B cfb Dumb linear color FB
> PMAG[A]-C PX Lo-end PixelStamp with an eye toward some 2D and 3D
> 	acceleration, but not much on the 3D side. Has either two or 4MB
> 	of RAM, I think.
> PMAG[A]-D PXG Mid-range 8-plane PixelStamp 3D accelerator with optional
> 	hardware Z-Buffer RAM, has three rendering engines(?) including
> 	an onboard Intel i860 @ 44MHz for command packet decoding and
> 	hardware cliping / transforms / drawing. It has three RAMDACs, one
> 	for each color. Full triangulation design, whatever that means.
> PMAG[A]-E PXG+ same as above, only 24 plane instead of 8 plane.
> PMAG[A]-F PXG+Turbo same as above only *96 PLANE* I think it has four
> 	rendering engies, counting the i860 running at 60MHz (?)
> PMAG[A]-J 8/24 plane non-accelerated linear fb.
> PMAGB-B HX/sfb 2MB VRAM, 2D accelerated linear fb. Designed specifically
> 	for fast scrolling in X and at the console. Has 64x64 hardware
> 	cursor. I belive it has something nearly like a BitBLT, though I
> 	don't know much else about it its internals.
> PMAGB-J TX Same or close to PMAG-J, think this also has the option for
> 	audio and video capture, though I don't know anyone who has 
> 	purchased the software from DEC to do it.
> PMAGC-A PV ZLX/M1 PixelVision 3D accelerator, improved on PixelStamp
> 	design. Don't know anything else about it.
> PMAGC-B PV ZLX/M2 Same as above only with Z-buffer I think
> PMAGC-E PV ZLX/L2 No idea, they call it thePVLite-MID
> PMAGD-A ZLX/E1 HX+ (sfb+ like improved PMAGB-B) and 8 plane PixelVision 3d
> PMAGD-B ZLX/E2 HX+ and 24 plane PixelVision 3D without Z-Buffer
> PMAGD-C ZLX/E3 HX+ and 24 plane PixelVision 3d with Z-Buffer
> 
> 	I don't know anything more about PixelVision because I don't own
> one, but I'm sure it's better / faster than PixelStamp.
> 
> 	It should also be noted that there are several different FirmWare
> revisions for the PX/PXG cards, as well as the PMAGB-B's. Later firmware
> revisions will likely give you better performance. The hitch: there is no
> available TurboChannel flasher for pmax, there is a flasher for Alpha
> 3000's, but I don't have any further information about it. Without an
> Alpha console to flash it from, you'd have to pull the EEPROM on a
> PX/PXG. I think the PMAGB-B's is soldered on, so you have to flash it. The
> Alpha people would probably know more about that than I would.

Thanks a lot.  This is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for.

> > The 5800 is XMI/VAXBI with MIPS CPUsets.
> 
> 	If you had pictures you could probably ask someone on the VAX port
> to identify some of the hardware in the machine, but my guess is that
> they've never seen anything like it either. I don't even know if they are
> R2x00, R3x00, or R4x00.

I know what hardware is in it.  I was wondering if anyone had any
knowledge with XMI.  I know what *my* 5800 contains.  I also wanted to
know if anyone knew the difference between the T2025 CPU card and the
T2026 Hyperion upgrade module.

Peace...  Sridhar