This archive contains the P96 driver for Oliver Achten's pVision
card, a graphics card for the PCMCIA slots of the A1200 and A600.
The card is available for purchase from Alinea.
This driver includes support for the latest P96 versions such as
panning, screen draging and mode mixing, that is, any type of screen
is dragable over any other screen. The chip also supports two palettes
such that dragged chunky screens show the correct colors. As for P96
screens in general, the foreground screen cannot be dragged if there
is no background, or the foreground screen uses panning.
The driver supports all features the card offers: Accelerated
rectangle filling, rectangle inversion, copying, text rendering and
pattern fill, also conversion from planar to chunky is accelerated.
Line drawing is currently not supported by the card. The card also
offers a hardware sprite used as mouse pointer offering three colors,
like the Amiga sprite.
The card has a 32MB of video RAM. To allow full use of 32MB, a
functioning MMU is required and the mmu.library must be
installed. Without a functioning MMU or without this library, only 4MB
of video RAM can be made use of.
The mmu.library can be downloaded from Aminet here:
https://www.aminet.net/util/libs/MMULib.lha
See there for more information on this library and its goals.
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Installation:
If you do not yet own P96, please buy it from iComp here:
https://shop.icomp.de
Note that the free edition on Aminet does NOT support all features
of this card and may not function correctly.
The release 3.6.3 and onwards will support pVision natively and you
can install the pVision driver through the P96 installer. The
following steps are therefore only required for older releases of P96:
Copy from the P96 archive the file(s) "DEVS/Monitors/Picasso96" and
its icon ("DEVS/Monitors/Picasso96.info") to the directory
"DEVS:Monitors" of your workbencha installation. Then select "Rename"
from the workbench icon menu to rename the file to "pVision". Select
"Information" from the "Icon" menu of the workbench, edit the
tooltypes and add or edit the tooltype "BOARDTYPE" to
"BOARDTYPE=pVision".
Then copy pVision.card from this archive to LIBS:Picasso96/, wait 5
seconds, then reboot the machine.
You should then edit video modes with P96Prefs (recommended) or the
older Picasso96Mode preferences editor.
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The following tool types are supported in the pVision monitor icon and
can be placed there either manually or by the latest version of
P96Prefs:
INTERRUPT=Yes Use hardware interrupts for syncing the
driver to the vertical blank. This is the default and also the recommended
option.
INTERRUPT=No Do not use hardware interrupts. May be useful
to work around some programs that bang the hardware directly.
MMU=Yes Make use of the MMU if available and provide a
full 32MB of video RAM. This is the default and also recommended.
MMU=No Do not make use of the MMU and only provide 4MB
of video RAM. May be required by the ShapeShifter MuEVD video driver or
programs that bang the MMU directly bypassing the mmu.library.
PCMCIASPEED=100 Set the access cycle of the PCMCIA bus to 100ns.
This allows faster access to the card and speeds up all graphics
operations. This is also the default.
PCMCIASPEED=150 Set the access cycle of the PCMCIA bus to 150ns.
This may be required by some turbo boards. Use this setting if the card
locks up or false pixels appear on the screen when rendering.
MEMORYCLOCK=166 Set the memory clock to 166Mhz. Use this setting
if the video RAM on the board is a 166Mhz type. This is the default.
The pVision boards sold by Alinea are, up to my knowledge, equipped with
the faster 200Mhz type (see below) and can be clocked higher.
Note that the 166MHz memory clock is insufficient to offer resolutions
of 1280x1024 or higher.
MEMORYCLOCK=200 Set the memory clock to 200MHz. This tooltype
requires that faster 200Mhz memory types are soldered on the board. The
boards sold by Alinea should come with faster memory that can be clocked
with 200Mhz.
A 200Mhz memory clock is required for resolutions of 1280x1024 and beyond.
However, despite the higher memory clock, it may be necessary to disable
the blitter in such high resolutions as otherwise insufficient bandwidth
may remain for video, and the video output may flicker. Lower resolutions
are not affected and allow hardware accelerated rendering with the blitter.
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Changes for release 43.257:
- This is the first public release of the pVision driver.
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The THOR-Software Licence (v3, January 2nd 2021)
This License applies to the computer programs known as the
"pVision.card". The "Program", below, refers to such program. The
"Archive" refers to the package of distribution, as prepared by the
author of the Program, Thomas Richter. Each licensee is addressed as
"you".
The Program and the data in the archive are freely distributable
under the restrictions stated below, but are also Copyright (c)
Thomas Richter.
Distribution of the Program, the Archive and the data in the Archive by a
commercial organization without written permission from the author to any
third party is prohibited if any payment is made in connection with such
distribution, whether directly (as in payment for a copy of the Program) or
indirectly (as in payment for some service related to the Program, or
payment for some product or service that includes a copy of the Program
"without charge"; these are only examples, and not an exhaustive
enumeration of prohibited activities).
However, the following methods of distribution involving payment shall not
in and of themselves be a violation of this restriction:
(i) Distributing the Program on a physical data carrier (e.g. CD-ROM,
DVD, USB-Stick, Disk...) provided that:
a) the Archive is reproduced entirely and verbatim on such data carrier,
including especially this licence agreement;
b) the data carrier is made available to the public for a nominal
fee only, i.e. for a fee that covers the costs of the data carrier,
and shipment of the data carrier;
c) a data carrier with the Program installed is made available to the
author for free except for shipment costs, and
d) provided further that all information on said data carrier is
redistributable for non-commercial purposes without charge.
Redistribution of a modified version of the Archive, the Program or the
contents of the Archive is prohibited in any way, by any organization,
regardless whether commercial or non-commercial. Everything must be kept
together, in original and unmodified form.
Limitations.
THE PROGRAM IS PROVIDED TO YOU "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY. THERE IS NO
WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. THE ENTIRE
RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD
THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THIS LICENCE, YOU MUST DELETE THE PROGRAM, THE ARCHIVE
AND ALL DATA OF THIS ARCHIVE FROM YOUR STORAGE SYSTEM. YOU ACCEPT THIS
LICENCE BY USING OR REDISTRIBUTING THE PROGRAM.
Thomas Richter
Note that this program is also available under license from individual
Computers, Jens Schönfeld GmbH, and from Alinea, sold along with the
pVision card.
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Send ideas, improvements, bug reports (please as concrete as possible)
to:
Thomas Richter
EMail: thomas.richter@alumni.tu-berlin.de
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Thomas Richter,
May 2026.
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