Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!wuarchive!texbell!attctc!chasm
From: chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Super VGA Standard
Summary: Super VGA Standard
Keywords: VGA
Message-ID: <9777@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 19 Oct 89 13:41:22 GMT
References: <3458@scolex.sco.COM>
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 40

In article <3458@scolex.sco.COM>, loranb@sco.COM (Loran Ball) writes:
> Does anyone know if the Super VGA standard has been finalized yet?

Nope, it is very close, and we hope to pass it up to the full VESA meeting
sometime early next year (and they will make it final).  I will probably
post a summary of the results of our next meeting sortly after we have it.

I am a bit out of date since I missed the last two technical meetings, but
we are making a lot of progress -- the standard should handle any board
currently in production, and it should allow for virtually any resolutions
we might want.  STB is committed to supporting the standard, as are Orchid,
Video 7/Headland Technologies, ATI, and several others participating in the
meetings.  I expect we will have upgrade BIOSes for our current cards out
within 4-6 months of the spec release.

One major feature that I hope makes it through is the ability to use some
parts of the BIOS in protected mode (without the overhead of ABIOS) -- this
may make support of higher resolution graphics modes more board independent
in future versions of Xenix, et al.  (The procedure involves optional copying
of small blocks of code from the BIOS into the executable code segment of the
operating system, so changing the card results in changing the code.)

Charles
> If it has, where can I get a copy of this spec?
> Which manufacturer's boards support this new standard?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -loranb (uunet!sco!loranb    loranb@sco.COM)


===============================================================================
"Those who would sacrifice **  Charles Marslett
liberty for security,      **  STB Systems, Inc. <-- apply all std. disclaimers
deserve neither."          **  Wordmark Systems  <-- that's just me
  -- Benjamin Franklin     **  chasm\@attctc.dallas.tx.us
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. The one line about STB supporting the VGA 2.0 standard (super VGA standard)
is the party line -- an official statement.