README TR8900C 1.0
This is a driver for a Trident 8900C ISA bus video card for the Nextstep
operating system. It supports 1024 x 768 in interlaced mode. Email
me if you need some other mode for the Trident.
Basically, this is video card is all I have for this machine so I decided
to make a driver to use a decent video mode. Although it is
not as fast as Local Bus/PCI cards, it is quite decent in 1024 x 768
modes (faster than windows). This driver is absolutely free to use.
Known Bugs:
Due to lack of technical support from either Next or Trident, two
bugs exist in the driver. These bugs don't affect the functionality
and are mereley annoying. [Begin violin music] Because this is an
ISA video card, I didn't want to spend too much time fixing it since
it is obsolete. I doubt there will be strong support to fix any
non-confirmed bugs by Next.
Screen Tearing/Artifacting: Due to a bug in Nextstep (90% belief)
I believe that the OS is not calling the page change routine correctly.
Drawing operations for the top of the screen will sometimes occur on
the bottom and vice-versa. This only happens for small regions. Once
that area is drawn over again or refreshed by moving a window over it
once, it is cleared up. Luckily Nextstep stores the actual screen
image in memory rather than just in the video buffer.
The second bug has to deal with changing the display mode to 800 x 600.
This does not work. Basically, the IOSVGADisplay object method
selectMode: doesn't work for 4 color gray SVGA drivers. There are
no examples of such a driver with multiple instances. The documentation
is also pretty skimpy in this area. This bug also annoys me
because it forces people to have to use the only mode I have
1024 x 768 Interlaced. I had setups for various others, but
it wont select them if that mechanism doesn't work.
Now that the bad news is out of the way, on with the
Installation:
Basically, once the package is untarred, you should be able to double
click on the driver icon in the File Viewer. It will then run the
system config program and install the driver. From there, you can
select the Trident 8900C for the video driver. Once you reboot the
system, it should be working.
I can be reached via email:
dnelson@scri.fsu.edu
SYMPATICO
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.