_____________________ ViewFinder user guide _____________________ // // // Introduction // // Thank you for purchasing ViewFinder. This graphics card for your RISC PC will considerably enhance your computing pleasure by providing much higher display resolutions and refresh rates than offered by the native video system of the RISC PC. The following will serve as your guide to installing and using your ViewFinder. Please note that the software for ViewFinder and this guide are still under development. You are advised to keep abreast of new developments, either through your supplier or me. If you have Internet access, I strongly recommend that you join the Windfall Engineering mailing list via http://groups.yahoo.com/group/windfall. New versions of the software will only be announced on this mailing list. It is also recommended that you visit the website of Windfall Engineering on a regular basis. Support information and news will be regularly available from this site. Due to the ongoing development, the guide is currently provided as a *-command. It is advised that you open a Task window (press ^F12) and execute the command *ViewFinderGuide to read it comfortably. Please read 'Known problems' before emailing me about a bug you've encountered. // // // Installation // // Your ViewFinder should be inserted into one of the free expansion card slots in your RISC PC. To do this : 1) Switch off your RISC PC. 2) Open up your RISC PC by removing the top cover. 3) Locate a free expansion card slot (see below). 4) If anything 'covers' the slot at the back of the RISC PC, remove it. 5) Insert ViewFinder into the free expansion card slot. Ensure that the card is pushed into the slot connector on the backplane as far as it will go, but do not force it. 6) Screw the ViewFinder to the back of the case by using the two screws that were removed along with the original blanking plate that covered the slot. Choosing an expansion card slot for ViewFinder requires some thought. Not all expansion card slots are equally suitable. As you may know, expansion card slots are numbered. Regardless of whether you are using a backplane with 2, 4, 6 or 8 slots in your RISC PC, the slot that is located closest to the bottom of your RISC PC is always slot number 0, and slot numbers increase from there. For example, the slots on a 4-way backplane are numbered 0, 1, 2 and 3, starting at the bottom and going up. Only slots 0 and 1 offer DMA (Direct Memory Access) to inserted cards. It is recommended to use ViewFinder in slot 0 or 1, as the availability of DMA can increase ViewFinder's performance (although not by an essential amount). If slot 0 and 1 are unavailable because you already have cards in them, you will either have to move one of these cards to slot 2 or up, or put ViewFinder into slot 2 or up. Currently, due to a small mechanical design flaw present in the first series of ViewFinder cards, you must NOT use slot 0, so the recommended slot number is 1. Once the card is installed, do not connect your monitor to ViewFinder's VGA connector yet. Instead, as your supplier will or should have instructed you, power up your machine while holding down the 'V' key on your keyboard. This temporarily disables ViewFinder. Release the 'V' key once you enter the desktop. Then open a Task window (press ^F12) and type *ViewFinderGuide to read this guide (which you probably are doing now already). You can now finish the installation of your ViewFinder : 1) Select a suitable desktop mode. Go to the RISC OS configuration screen by double-clicking on !Boot. Select 'Screen'. Ensure that the 'Colours' field shows any one of '256 colours', '256 greys', '32 thousand' or '16 million'. The selected resolution does not matter. 2) If you have a Kinetic card from Castle Technology in your RISC PC, open a Task window and execute the command '*Configure ViewFinderDMASpeed 0'. 3) Switch off your machine. 4) Connect your monitor cable to ViewFinder's VGA connector instead of the regular VGA connector. If you have a monitor with dual inputs, it is recommended to connect one of the monitor inputs to ViewFinder's VGA connector and the other to the regular VGA connector so you can switch between the two easi|y. It is also recommended to refer to 'Dual input monitors' for more useful information. 5) Switch on your machine. When the machine has fully booted, and all is well, you will now see your familiar desktop display. This concludes the installation of your ViewFinder. // // // Selecting screen modes // // Screen modes can be selected either by using the standard Display Manager, or by using the ViewFinder Display Manager. The 'old' Display Manager should be used to select any of your 'old' modes. The ViewFinder Display Manager should be used to select the new high resolution modes. In principle, all your old modes are instantly available through the old Display Manager. There is, however, a restriction. Modes with less than 16 colours (or greys) cannot be selected on ViewFinders that don't use a Radeon type AGP card. The ViewFinder Display Manager is loaded automatically, and its functions are available through the 'monitor' icon on your iconbar. The ViewFinder Display Manager provides an easy way to select your favourite new high resolution modes. And learn new ones. It is important to realise that, depending on the type of monitor you use, it may not be possible to display all new high resolution modes available through ViewFinder. The ViewFinder Display Manager provides a default set of modes to get you started, but you will either need to verify that all these modes work on your particular monitor (and delete the ones that don't), or delete them all and start teaching the ViewFinder Display Manager new modes from scratch. To display the main menu of the ViewFinder Display Manager, please click MENU on its iconbar icon. The '16 greys', '16 colours', '256 greys', '256 colours', '32K colours' and '16M colours' submenus show the currently available set of modes. The modes under '16 greys' are all the modes showing 16 greys, the ones under '16 colours' are all the modes showing 16 colours, and so on. All modes are displayed as ' x , Hz'. The x and y resolution indicate the number of pixels that are displayed in horizontal and vertical direction respectively, and the refresh rate indicates the number of times per second that the monitor renders the display (the higher this number, the more 'comfortable' it is to watch the display). All ViewFinder modes are specified using only these three parameters. You do not need to build or edit RISC OS mode files anymore to create new modes. In principle, all combinations of x and y resolutions and frame rate that you can think up are directly available, within reason. The restrictions are : 1) ViewFinder provides a limited range of resolutions and frame rates. Also, the more pixels or colours are to be displayed, the more limited the range of frame rates (see below for a list of the maximum specifications). 2) Your monitor may not be able to display all the modes that ViewFinder provides. Consult the manual of your monitor for an indication of what ranges of resolutions and frame rates your monitor supports. 3) The x and y resolutions both have to be a multiple of 8 in most cases. In 256 or 16 colour modes the x resolution must be a multiple of 16 or 32 respectively. 4) Keep the refresh rate within reasonable limits, i.e. 50 up to 150 Hz. You can teach the ViewFinder Display Manager new modes in the following way : 1) In the 'Mode' submenu of the old Display Manager, enter 'V X Y F', where is the number of pixels required horizontally, is the number of pixels required vertically, is either 'G16' (for 16 greys), 'C16' (for 16 colours), 'G256' (for 256 greys), 'C256' (for 256 colours), 'C32K' (for 32 thousand colours) or 'C16M' (for 16 million colours), and is the required frame rate in Hz. For example, 'V X1600 Y1200 C32K F80' indicates a 1600 x 1200, 32 thousand colour, 80 Hz mode. 2) Press RETURN. The mode will now be selected for the first time. If it does not work it is either out of range for ViewFinder or for your monitor. In this case, press and *shortly hold down* both ALT keys and HOME to return to the previous mode, and try again specifying a lower resolution or frame rate. 3) Now go to the 'Changes' submenu of the ViewFinder Display Manager. This now shows something like 'Add 1600x1200,80Hz', indicating the specifications of the current mode. Click on this to add the mode to your favourites. The mode is added to the relevant submenu only (depending on the selected number of colours or greys). If 'C16' or 'G16' was used, the mode is added to both the '16 greys' and '16 colours' submenus. The same goes for 'G256' and 'C256'. Repeat steps 1 through 3 to add more modes until you are satisfied with the set you have. Should you want to, you can delete modes in the following way : 1) In the 'Changes' submenu of the ViewFinder Display Manager, click on 'Delete modes'. You are now in 'delete mode' (remember to revert to 'select mode', see point 3 !!!). 2) Now simply click on any of the modes to delete, as if you were selecting it. Instead of the mode being selected, it is deleted. 3) Once you have finished deleting modes, revert to 'select mode' by clicking on 'Select modes' in the 'Changes' submenu. Your selection of modes is stored in the file '.ViewFinder.Modes'. It is recommended that you make a backup of this file once you have finished making your mode set, so you can restore it if it becomes corrupted or is deleted by accident. For the currently latest !Boot tree the path of the file is '!Boot.Choices.ViewFinder.Modes'. Note that you can click on '16 greys', '16 colours' etc. directly (i.e. without going to a submenu entry). This reselects the current mode, but changes to the colour depth clicked on, which is not only helpful in quickly switching colour depth, but also speeds up adding modes, whenever, for a certain resolution and frame rate combination, you want to add all colour depths. // // // Screen mode limitations // // Monitors vary widely in their abilities to display screen modes. Your monitor may not be able display all the modes that ViewFinder can display. In addition, ViewFinder has its own limitations which causes it to be restricted to certain combinations of resolution, number of colours, and refresh rate. The ViewFinder software is aware of most of these limitations and tries to revert to sensible defaults if a mode you specify exceeds its limitations. Ideally, ViewFinder should also be aware of the limitations of your monitor. By default, generous defaults are assumed. It is highly recommended, however, that you indicate the specifications of your monitor to ViewFinder. You can do this using the latest ViewFinder software update utilities. // // // Performance // // Performance under ViewFinder, as you will experience, varies depending on the application being run. This is because some graphics operations are performed faster than before, while others have become slower. ViewFinder's great strength in this respect is that it can greatly improve the performance of some graphics operations by using hardware acceleration functions offered by the mounted graphics card. Examples are moving blocks of pixels, filling an area of the screen, or drawing lines. A large number of graphics operations are already hardware accelerated, and future versions of the ViewFinder software will improve on this, enhancing overall performance. ViewFinder's weakness is in direct access to the screen memory. This is slower than under the native video system because the data read from or written to the screen memory cannot go directly to and from the native screen memory RAM on the motherboard. Because the new screen memory is on the ViewFinder card, all data needs to be sent across the RISC PC expansion card bus. Currently, the most important graphics operation that is slowed down because of this is font drawing. Font drawing doesn't lend itself well to hardware acceleration, and, unfortunately, needs to access the screen memory a lot to merge or blend font characters to the existing background. The performance observed when working with applications will vary depending on the frequency and type of graphics operations used by the application to draw its graphics. Please note that, due to shortcomings of the accelerator hardware, acceleration of graphics operations in 16 colour modes is more difficult to achieve than in 256, 32K or 16M modes. If you have a Viewfinder fitted with an XPert 98 AGP card, special trickery ensures that rectangle copy, cached sprite plots and all fill operations are only slightly slower than expected, and only line drawing is not accelerated at all. If you have a Viewfinder fitted with an XPert 2000 Pro, however, very little can be accelerated in 16 colour modes. // // // Sleeping VIDC // // While ViewFinder is active, the native RISC PC video system is basically inactive, but still provides a display via the regular VGA connector. When an 'old' mode is selected, the native system and ViewFinder are set to the same resolution and colour depth. However, when a 'ViewFinder' mode is selected (using the ViewFinder Display Manager or using the 'V' option in *WimpMode commands), the native RISC PC video system is switched back to the lowest available resolution. This frees up all the memory that was previously needed to run in high resolution modes. To reduce the amount of memory used as much as possible, you might like to add the following mode definition to your mode definition file : # 640 x 40 (72Hz) startmode mode_name:640 x 40 x_res:640 y_res:40 pixel_rate:31500 h_timings:40,128,0,640,0,24 v_timings:3,28,220,40,220,9 sync_pol:3 endmode Please note that under RISC OS 4.02 and later, the screen memory used by the native RISC PC video system is always either 1 or 2 MB so it does not really pay to add the 640 x 40 mode. // // // Dual input monitors // // If you are using a dual input monitor that automatically switches to an active signal, it is possible to enable easy access to 'native' (VIDC) video modes (as if Viewfinder was disabled). There is no longer any need to reboot the machine with 'V' pressed (or '*Configure ViewFinderEnable 0' issued) to be able to use native video modes. Viewfinder output mode is normally selected. Native output mode can be selected by clicking Adjust on the Viewfinder Display Manager iconbar icon. Switching from native output mode back to Viewfinder output mode is done in the same way. The iconbar icon changes to indicate the output mode selected. Selecting a mode via the Viewfinder Display Manager will automatically switch to Viewfinder output mode. Switching output mode reselects the last visited Wimp mode in that output mode (or mode 28 initially). If you are in native output mode, *only* 'VIDC' modes are available, including 2 and 4 colour modes. If you want to use the output mode switching facility, connect your monitor to both the regular and Viewfinder's VGA output, and configure your Viewfinder as follows : *Configure ViewFinderBlankVIDC 1 *Configure ViewFinderDualOutput 1 Use *Configure ViewFinderDualOutput 0 to disable output mode switching. // // // Star commands // // Four *-commands are available. *ViewFinderMode and *ViewFinderPreviousmode should not be used directly. They are described for completeness. '*ViewFinderGuide' displays this guide. '*ViewFinderInformation' display some miscellaneous information about your Viewfinder. '*ViewFinderMode ' is basically the same as '*WimpMode ', except that it is implemented by the ViewFinder software instead of the WIMP, and supports the 'V' option to indicate that the mode is a new high resolution mode that is not supported by the native RISC PC video system. In fact, *WimpMode is aliased by the ViewFinder software to '*ViewFinderMode' to be able to intercept all *WimpMode commands. '*ViewFinderPreviousMode' is used by the ViewFinder Display Manager to reselect the mode which was previously selected. '*ViewFinderCacheContents' shows the contents of the sprite cache. '*ViewFinderTVOutModes' shows the available TV-out modes (Radeon equipped ViewFinders only, see 'TV-out modes' for more information). // // // Configuration commands // // Four configuration options are available to configure ViewFinder. All of them require a reboot of the machine to activate their effect. '*Configure ViewFinderEnable 0' completely disables ViewFinder (configuration commands, however, will still be available). You will have to connect your monitor to the regular VGA connector before you reboot. The command '*Configure ViewFinderEnable 1' will re-enable ViewFinder. '*Configure ViewFinderEnable 0' is the more 'permanent' cousin of holding down the 'V' key when booting your machine (which disables ViewFinder only temporarily, until the next reboot). '*Configure ViewFinderAcceleration 0' will prevent ViewFinder from using hardware acceleration to perform graphics operations. In normal situations it should not be used. '*Configure ViewFinderDMASpeed ' provides a way of selecting the speed of DMA (Direct Memory Access) used by ViewFinder, where is 0, 1, 2 or 3. '0' completely disables use of DMA, which is currently only needed when ViewFinder is used in conjunction with a Kinetic card from Castle Technology. '1', '2' or '3' selects increasing speeds of DMA. Currently, '3' can always be selected without any problems. '*Configure ViewFinderBlankVIDC 1' permanently blanks the output of the regular VGA output (i.e. the signal from VIDC). This may be useful if you have both VIDC's and ViewFinder's VGA outputs connected to your monitor at the same time. Most monitors will display the first VGA output that generates an image and stick with it until it stops generating an image. Because ViewFinder always takes a little time to take over the display from VIDC, VIDC is always the first to generate an image. In this case you continually have to switch your monitor back to the ViewFinder VGA output by hand, which soon becomes pretty annoying. Permanently blanking the VIDC VGA output prevents this problem. If you have only ViewFinder's VGA output connected, use '*Configure ViewFinderBlankVIDC 0'. '*Configure ViewFinderDualOutput' is described under 'Dual input monitors'. // // // Available information // // One system variable is available. ViewFinder$Enable is always set, and its value is "1" if viewFinder is enabled, "0" if disabled. An application of this variable is in selecting your default desktop mode. To this end, edit the file !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.VRAM (if you have VRAM fitted) !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.NoVRAM (if you have no VRAM fitted) This file contains a line similar to : WimpMode X1280 Y1024 C256 This selects your desktop mode (as selected under 'Screen' in the Configuration application). To select a 'ViewFinder mode' instead (which is only available if ViewFinder is enabled), change the line to If ""="1" Then WimpMode V X1600 Y1200 C256 F75 Else WimpMode X1280 Y1024 C256 (this is one line, from 'If' to the second 'C256'). Fill in your favourite mode as the actual mode. // // // Maximum specifications // // The following is a short list of modes that can be considered the maximum ones obtainable with ViewFinder. If a field is blank, the relevant mode can not be displayed. A = Viewfinders fitted with an ATI XPert 98 AGP card (Rage XL, 1 DRAM chip) B = Viewfinders fitted with an ATI XPert 98 AGP card (all others) C = Viewfinders fitted with an ATI XPert 2000 Pro AGP card D = Viewfinders fitted with an ATI Radeon 7xxx AGP card A B C D 1280 x 1024 x 16, 256 or 32K colours 100+ 100+ 100+ 100+ 1280 x 1024 x 16M colours 87 100+ 100+ 100+ 1600 x 1200 x 16, 256 or 32K colours 90 90 90 90 1600 x 1200 x 16M colours 62 80 90 90 1920 x 1440 x 16, 256 or 32K colours 75 75 75 75 1920 x 1440 x 16M colours 75 75 2048 x 1536 x 16, 256 or 32K colours 68 68 72 75 2048 x 1536 x 16M colours 67 70 Note that XPert 98 cards cannot actually display 2048 x 1536 modes, since 2032 pixels is the maximum obtainable width. // // // Dual-head modes // // ViewFinders fitted with a Radeon type AGP card with a second VGA connector have Dual-head capability. To use it, do the following : - Connect a second monitor to the second VGA output. - Ensure you have nothing connected to the SVGA (TV-out) output. - Power up or hard reset your computer (note that doing this before you connect a second monitor will make Dual-head fail to work). - Manually enter your modes (in the future, the ViewFinder Display Manager may be used for this). E.g. from the 'Mode' submenu of the RISC OS Display Manager, enter 'D X2560 Y1024 C256 F75'. Both monitors should now display one half of a 2560 x 1024, 256 colour desktop. Use 'M' instead of 'D' to 'swap sides'. You can make your monitors display different horizontal resolutions as well, e.g. add 'S1600' to make your second monitor display 1600 pixels horizontally (the first will display the rest). // // // TV-out modes // // ViewFinders fitted with a Radeon type AGP card have TV-out capability. To use it, do the following : - Connect ViewFinder and your TV with an SVGA cable. - Switch on your TV and ensure it is switched to its SVGA input. - Power up or hard reset your computer (note that doing this before you connect ViewFinder and your TV will make TV-out fail to work). - When in the desktop, open a TaskWindow (press CTRL-F12), then enter 'ViewFinderTVOutModes'. This will list the available TV-out modes. - Pick a TV-out mode (e.g. number 6), and enter 'WimpMode T6 C256' (you can choose from C16, G16, C256, G256, C32K and C16M, as for desktop modes). - Your desktop will switch to the selected resolution and colour depth and the image should now also appear on your TV. // // // Known problems // // The following is a summary of known problems. Most will be solved by new versions of the ViewFinder software which will be released in the future. - As discussed under 'Performance', some graphics operations still seem slow under ViewFinder. You can expect some of them to become faster in the future. - As discussed under 'Configuration commands', if your machine uses a Kinetic processor card from Castle Technology, ViewFinder's use of DMA needs to be switched off entirely, until a cure for the underlying problem is presented by Castle Technology. - The supported AGP cards cannot display 2 or 4 colour modes, and acceleration in 16 colour modes is limited. If you need to run in 2 or 4 colour modes, you must disable Viewfinder. In 16 colour modes, Viewfinder's performance will suffer. Refer to 'Dual input monitors' for more detailed information. - Hardware scrolling is slower than can be expected because, unfortunately, there is no way to exactly match the 'smart' way the screen is expected to be scrolled under the native graphics system. - A few existing applications directly access screen memory and depend on the screen memory being accessible through specific addresses. These applications will currently fail to work properly until they are updated, because the screen memory addresses have changed under ViewFinder. - Due to hardware limitations, a very few existing applications that directly write to the screen memory in a very specific way will sometimes show 'strange colours'. The limitation involves writing to 16 or 32 bit pixels using byte accesses. // // // Epilogue // // For any questions, please send email to : kortink@inter.nl.net or contact your supplier. Visit Windfall Engineering's website at : http://www.windfall.nl. John Kortink, 10 December 2003