8.6.3 Eclipse PCI Adapter

Eclipse PCI Falcon Adapter

Titan Design Ltd aus England stellt einen PCI Adapter für den Atari Falcon vor mit dem es möglich wird auch PCI-Grafikkarten am Falcon zu betreiben.

Eclipse arbeitet mit einer Standard PCI-Grafikarte.

Diese Erweiterung passt nicht komplett in das originale Falcongehäuse.

Die Erweiterung ansich besteht aus zwei Teilen, dem eigentlichen Adapter bzw. dem Interface, welches auf dem internen Erweiterungsbus des Falcons seinen Platz findet und einer externen Box die den Kartenadapter und eben die PCI-Grafikkarte enthält. Falcons die sich in einem Towergehäuse befinden sind hier wesentlich schneller zu Modifizieren. Das Interface und der Kartenadapter werden mit zwei Flachbandkabeln, ähnlich der NOVA-Karte, miteinander verbunden. Beide Kabel dürfen bis zu 30cm lang sein.

Das ist aussreichend um die externe Box hinter einem Falcon zu plazieren. In einem Towergehäuse ist so genügend Spielraum um die Grafikkarte bequem einbauen zu können. Als Grafikkarte war beim Prototype eine ATI Rage mit 2MB Videoram eingesetzt.

Abbildung 1 - Eclipse Videokarten Adapter an einem ddd-Falcon

Eclipse ermöglicht folgende Grafikauflösungen:

Auflösung:      Bitplane:   Farben:

 640  x  480    8, 16, 24   16.7 millionen Farben
 800  x  600    8, 16, 24   16.7 millionen Farben
1024  x  760    8, 16,(24)  65K Farben (16.7) millionen Farben
1280  x 1024    8,(16, 24)  65K Farben (16.7) millionen Farben
1600  x 1200    8, 16       256, (65K)

Der Preis bewegt sich laut Hersteller momentan bei 199 englischen Pfund inklusive der Steuer. Dafür enthält man den Adapter, das Interface, eine ATI Rage 2 MB Grafikkarte und die entsprechende VDI-Treiber Software.

http://www.encill.abelalways.co.uk/index.html

Installation an some more..

Installation is very easy and straightforward, although it would have been even easier with a clip on the power-cord. Now you have to solder this wire to a +12V source somewhere on the Falcon.

It works very well with my Afterburner, the driver even takes advantage of the faster CPU and fast-RAM. However, there is a timing problem on the Eclipse that only appears with "fast" processors. A 030 (including the CT2 I guess) isn't affected by this. The Lattice on the Eclipse is fully programmable though, and can even be reprogrammed while sitting in the Falcon (either by the Falcon itself or a PC). When/if Sven Karlsson finds and correct the problem, the Eclipse can easily be updated by the owner :-)

Another thing that Afterburner-owners must be aware of is that the new AB-driver needed by fVDI/Eclipse can't be configured with the old configure-tool! I tried to reconfigure it, and spent a week figuring out why MiNT and MagiC wouldn't work... Don't touch the AB-driver, and you'll have no problems.

There's not much to say about fVDI really, the configuration-file is well documented and really says it all. A few things are worth mentioning though:

*: Use a different path for fVDI's and NVDI's GEMSYS-folder if you have both installed. I use c:\fvdi\gemsys myself, but any folder on any partition would do.
*: If you want to use NVDI together with fVDI, run NVDI immediately after fVDI, and make sure that NVDI's screen drivers are deleted or renamed. These are located in NVDI's GEMSYS-folder (usually c:\gemsys), and are called NVDIDRV*.SYS.

NVDI will then be used for all font-handling and printing, and if you have NVDI 5 it will also provide some new, screen-related functionality. A few new apps, mostly commercial stuff from ASH, needs this. However, this doesn't work particularly well with fVDI yet. Stay away if you can.
*: If you don't want/need to print anything, and can live with only bitmap-fonts, I strongly suggest to drop NVDI. fVDI has very fast and reliable bitmap-support, much faster than using NVDI. You have to see it to believe how incredibly fast fVDI/Eclipse handles text! I haven't used NVDI for months now (don't own a printer anymore) and don't miss it a second.
*: Always use the latest beta, available from Johan Klockars' web- and ftp-site at http://rand.thn.htu.se/. There's a lot of improvements in these compared to the released version.
*: Many applications have problems with non-palette modes (i.e. 16-bit and upwards), due to the fact that Atari never really documented how to support these modes. fVDI tries to work around these problems (as all modern VDIs does), and actually does it quite well. For best compatibility I suggest that a NVDI-compatible palette should be used, this is easily done with the "palette" keyword in fvdi.sys (betas only).
*: The ATI Rage-driver used for the Eclipse use the accelerated hardware on the graphics-card when possible. This can be turned off if needed, but I strongly recommend to use full acceleration.

It has two different caches that might be sensible to disable though, this is "screencache" and "imgcache". I use both with great success, I recommend enabling them as they speed up background-restores a lot.
*: Some applications use XBIOS and LINEA to access the framebuffer directly. This is not really recommended with accelerated graphics cards, but it will work with the Eclipse if "lineafix" and "xbiosfix" is enabled.

Besides this I can only recommend to read the docs carefully, this is always a sensible thing to do ;-)

Hopefully this can be of help for some (potential) users.
Jo Even Skarstein http://joska.nvg.org/

A quick tip from Thomas

For all eclipse users it is advisable to obtain a monitor switch box. Not only does it save time switching between VGA leads but it also saves you having to unplug the lead between the falcon and the Eclipse card when the FVDI sys file is set up incorrectly.

Some warm words..

1) The version of fVDI that Cortex supply with Eclipse is hopelessly out of date and very buggy. As I mentioned, get the latest version from the author's web site first.

2) The configuration file that Cortex supply will not work. It isn't even set up to recognise the ATI Rage card so it has no hope of working! If anyone wants a copy of my working file, let me know.

3) The fVDI option to configure the resolution and number of colours interactively at boot time doesn't work (at least I couldn't get it to work) and simply corrupts the fVDI program, needing a restore. I have to explicitly hardcode the configuration and edit it and reboot when I want to change.

4) The installation of the hardware is relatively painless, however it does require you to cut the main power supply lead inside the Falcon to feed it into Eclipse! This was extremely fiddly and nerve-wracking for me - the cable just isn't long enough.

5) The ribbon cable that connects the Eclipse board to the Rage board wasn't long enough to fit the Rage board inside my tower case. I had to feed the cable out through the cartridge port hole and sit the box externally on top of the tower case. I've not got an extension cable to allow me to put it inside the case.

Chris Simon
osian@zetnet.co.uk