I've got an old 486DX computer (sort of a test patient) with the somewhat older VideoLogicBus(Does VESA ring a bell?) Here is my plan, it may seem difficult: I will build a 3D accellerator for my 486.
The 3D accellerator that I will build will use about 2-4MB DRAM(not VRAM for normal VCards). SRAM would be easier to implement but I don't know how good it'll be since normal VRAMs are DRAMs specially modified. The 3D accellerator's core will be my old 386DX-33MHz CPU. I think that it's 11.4Million ops/sec is good enough for a 3D acc. What's that? 3D acc's are math intensive? I'll add my Cyrix Fasmath 387 coprocessor (aka. "Number-Cruncher").
Here's where you programmers come in. When the 386 (my 3d acc) boots, it will look at the first memory address. THE VIDEO BIOS! I don't know ASM, but BIOS's are programmed in ASM. I need an ASM programmer to program my video BIOS(IN COLOR).
The BIOS should set the 386's first couple pins as outputs for the video output. A pin for Red connection, Blue conn, Green conn, Horizontal sync, and Vertical sync. This card will be using the Video Logic Bus(VESA). The VESA Bus is 32-bit and has a direct link to the 486 CPU and the system memory. Please note that!
When a computer starts up, the first message on the screen is something like VGA BIOS 1024 version 4(for ATI-Wonder-16), or S3 805/801 Gendac interface(for S3 805 VLB card.
I thank every single ASM programmer that helps me create this accellerator. If you are wondering what else should be in the video BIOS code, I have no idea. Try emailing ATI, S3, NVidia, or some graphics card designer.
Thankyou for any help/response.
