ATI Technologies FIRE GL1 User manual

User's Guide

2
DISCLAIMER
The manufacturer (MFR) reserves the right to make changes to this
document and the products which it describes without notice. The
MFR shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or
omissions made herein; not for incidental or consequential
damages resulting from the furnishing, performance, or use of this
material.
The MFR makes no representation that the interconnection of
products in the manner described herein will not infringe on
existing or future patent rights, nor do the descriptions contained
herein imply the granting of license to make, use or sell equipment
constructed in accordance with this description.
The PCI accelerators have been designed to support the PCI local
bus standards. Some computers use proprietary local bus circuitry
and therefore may not be fully compatible with the MFR’s local
bus cards. Although tested successfully in a wide variety of
computer systems, the MFR cannot be held responsible for any
incompatibilities which may occur between this card and the
system configuration you plan to use. We recommend that you
check with the dealer or distributor for your computer system
before installing your card.
© Copyright 1999 Fire GL Graphics. All rights reserved

Table of Contents
3
1A
BOUT FIRE GL1................................................... 5
HARDWARE FEATURES............................................................ 6
SOFTWARE FEATURES ............................................................. 6
PROFESSIONAL 3D RENDERING ............................................7
CARD LAYOUT ........................................................................8
2H
OW TO USE THIS MANUAL ................................ 9
MANUAL CONVENTIONS .......................................................9
3I
NSTALLING FIRE GL1............................................ 10
INSTALLING THE HARDWARE ................................................10
Preparing your Computer..........................................11
Opening the Computer Cabinet ..............................13
Installing the Card......................................................... 14
Reassembling Your Computer ..................................15
Connecting the Monitor Cable.................................16
After Installing the Card .............................................17
INSTALLING SOFTWARE..........................................................19
General Information ....................................................19
Software Installation for Windows NT4.0.............20
4F
IRE GL1SOFTWARE UTILITIES............................ 22
CHANGING THE VIDEO SETTINGS ........................................ 23
Setting Resolution and Color Depth....................... 24
Choosing Monitors and Display Refresh Rates ....25
Adjusting the Monitor Display ..................................27
Setting Multiple Monitor Configuration..................31
MODIFYING APPLICATION PROFILES.....................................33
5R
EMOVING THE FIRE GL1DRIVERS ..................... 36

Table of Contents
4
6 TROUBLESHOOTING...............................................37
COMMON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS ............................... 37
A TECHNICAL DETAILS ..............................................40
FEATURES AND PERFORMANCE ............................................. 40
Hardware........................................................................ 40
Software .......................................................................... 41
Hardware Performance .............................................. 42
PIN ASSIGNMENTS ................................................................... 42
VIDEO MODES.......................................................................... 43
BLOCK DIAGRAM .................................................................... 44
B GLOSSARY ...............................................................45
C TRADEMARKS ..........................................................57
D EMI COMPLIANCE INFORMATION ........................58

About Fire GL1 5
1ABOUT FIRE GL1
♦HARDWARE FEATURES
♦SOFTWARE FEATURES
♦PROFESSIONAL 3D RENDERING
♦CARD LAYO U T
Diamond Fire GL1 is based upon the IBM 256-bit Graphics
Rasterizer, integrating the functionality of a VGA controller, a
2D/3D Raster Engine with Geometry Pipeline Setup processor, and
a 250 MHz RAMDAC in a single package.
Diamond Fire GL1 delivers a balance of 2D power and superior 3D
acceleration providing power for professional 2D and 3D NT
graphics applications:
♦Mechanical Engineering Analysis (MEA)
♦Mechanical Computer Aided Design (MCAD)
♦Electrical Design Automation (EDA)
♦Digital Content Creation (DCC)
♦Animation
♦Visualization

6
HARDWARE FEATURES
♦IBM 256-bit Graphics Rasterizer
♦32 MB SGRAM used for unified framebuffer, Z-, Alpha-,
Overlay-, Window ID and Clip/Stencil buffers, and texture
storage
♦Single short form factor AGP and PCI versions
⇒AGP ATX/NLX bus, AGP2x version 2.0 compliant, with
sideband addressing
⇒PCI bus 32-bit 33/66 MHz version 2.1 compliant
♦100 MHz clock on raster engine and frame buffer
♦64 KByte BIOS FlashROM, reprogrammable by software
♦32-bit RGBαTrue color 2D and 3D acceleration
♦Accelerated, double-buffered 32-bit TrueColor up to
1920 x 1200, at 75 Hz refresh rates
♦24-bit Z- buffer, 4-bit double-buffer, 8-bit single-buffer
overlay
♦Video engine supports YUV conversion, point and bilinear
scaling
♦Standard blue 15-pin D-Type video output connector
SOFTWARE FEATURES
♦OpenGL 1.2 ICD
♦Supports Windows NT 4.0
♦Multiprocessor system support
♦Software driver supports up to 4 displays
♦DDC2B support on all operating systems

About Fire GL1 7
♦Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions (70 New Instructions) in
the new Intel Processors
♦Customized application settings for individual ISV applications
♦Multithreaded OpenGL pipeline and ThreadSafe OpenGL 1.2
ICD support for dual processors.
♦Multihead display driver supports up to 4 screens
♦DDC2B monitor support on all operating system platforms
PROFESSIONAL 3D RENDERING
♦Full OpenGL 1.2 feature set
♦Gouraud shading
♦Bilinear and trilinear MIP-mapping
♦Alpha blending
♦Fogging and depth cueing
♦Anti-aliased lines and sorted polygons
♦Scissoring and stippling
♦Overlay and stencil buffers
♦Z-buffering
For more information on features and performance of your Fire
GL1please refer tothe sectionTechnical Details.
Important — You must be running Windows NT 4.0, updated with
Service Pack 4 (or newer) prior to installing the Fire GL1 drivers.
The Service Pack is available from Microsoft's web page,
www.microsoft.com. For most languages you can perform the
Service Pack 4 update from the SuperCD when you run the Quick
Start utility.

8
CARD LAYOUT
Fire GL1 with AGP bus interface
1 IBM 256-bit Graphics Rasterizer
with fan
4 Flash BIOS PROM
2SG-RAMchips
- also on solder side
5 Oscillator
3 DB-15 monitor connector 6 3.3V/5V voltage supply support with
heatsink
Fire GL1 with PCI bus interface

How to Use this Manual 9
2HOW TO USE THIS
MANUAL
For your convenience, this online User’s Guide has been formatted
as an Adobe®Acrobat®PDF file. This format gives you great
flexibility when using this documentation. You can easily print
this manual to access it off-line; it will look like any standard
document with a table of contents and page numbers. You can
also read it online—important links, such as table of contents
entries, worldwide web, and email addresses are active.
This manual might be displayed with slightly-reduced
magnification in your Reader. If you experience any difficulty
reading certain image files online, use the Reader’s Zoom To
feature from the View menu and increase the magnification to
about 133%.
For printing the User’s Guide, a print resolution of 600 dpi is
recommended.
MANUAL CONVENTIONS
Your Fire GL1 User’s Guide is organized in a standard, familiar
way. A few icons are used to point out important information:
This icon marks useful tips or important operational notes.
This icon is a warning about possible electrical/software hazards or
problems.
Hypertext links are active. If you are reading this manual online,
place your mouse cursor over Table of Contents entries or main
headings. If the hand icon changes to a pointing index finger,
simply click and you will move to that place in the document.
Some email or World Wide Web addresses inside this manual may
be active as well. Go directly to a Web, FTP site, or email program
simply by clicking on an active link.

10
3INSTALLING FIRE GL1
♦INSTALLINGTHE HARDWARE
♦INSTALLING SOFTWARE
INSTALLING THE HARDWARE
Notes:
♦If you plan to set up a multi-monitor system you must install
the primary display adapter and the drivers first, before
installing additional graphics cards.
With the drivers provided you can operate a maximum of four
Fire GL1 Graphics Accelerators. The drivers are designed
exclusively to support Fire GL1 Graphics Accelerators with the
Windows NT 4.0 operating system (updated with Service
Pack 4 or higher). The drivers DO NOT SUPPORT any other
type or brand of graphics card or operating system.
♦Your Fire GL1 may be either an AGP or PCI type. Follow the
instructions for the specific card that you purchased.
♦Please note that the illustrations provided in this section are
for instructional use only; the card shown may look different
than the one you purchased.