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From: anc@camcon.co.uk (Adrian Cockcroft)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: PC2 Graphics beats Amiga
Message-ID: <522@titan.camcon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 11-May-87 13:38:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: titan.522
Posted: Mon May 11 13:38:50 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 15-May-87 01:33:20 EDT
References: <1137@hal9000.UUCP>
Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK
Lines: 44
Summary: sources for PC2 rumours
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:4753 comp.graphics:632


>>The high end PC2's have a plug in card  with 1  Meg of  video ram and
>>use  the intel  82786 graphics  chip.   These machines  are 80286 and
>>80386 based.
>
> Are you talking about IBM's 1024x768x8 high resolution card ? ...
>
> Geoff Shapiro

No, I think there must be 3 levels of graphics on the PC2,

1) gate array with video RAMs 640*480 but not enough RAM for 8 bpp
        at this resolution.

2) 82786 based 640*480*8 bpp same display with enough RAM and 82786 for
        hardware windows & bitblt/line drawing. This may be mixed VRAM
        and page mode DRAM.

3) something else giving 1024*768*8 bpp. This won't be an 82786 since
the pixel clock on the 82786 has a max of 25 MHz.

Is 2) an 82786? Well the 82786 documentation goes on and on about
640*480*8 resolution and lists lots of IBM PC style software companies
doing things for it (e.g. DR GEM-786). I have heard that a UK company
is doing the IBM presentation manager software for the 82786 and I asked
a technical support guy from a UK Intel distributor and he said that it
was definitely in there somewhere but that he was not sure what was in
what!

Maybe someone has a hardware spec of the whole range and can settle this.
All the press so far is on the low end machines and the 82786 is only
just into production so I suspect that the software drivers aren't ready
and it will come along later.

I have just noticed that I said the PC2 plug in will have 1 Meg video RAM,
I meant graphics RAM since the 82786 only does hardware windowing if used
with page mode DRAMs (but it can support VRAMS as well).

I will restrict further discussion of the 82786 to comp.graphics but
it might be fun to put a PC 82786 plug-in into an A2000.... :-)

-- 
---- Adrian Cockcroft   anc@uk.co.camcon        (0223) 358855
---- Cambridge Consultants Ltd, Science Park, Cambridge CB4 4DW, England