Dear P9000 owners,

I have made an update to our archives at sunsite.unc.edu :
/pub/Linux/X11/viper . I added:
	1. An updated "freq" program (also works with NetBSD).
	2. A new VGA register probing program for the W5186.
	3. An updated basic information and (STATUS) package.
	4. anything else dated after Oct. '93 is updated.

I'd appreciate it if you could run the register-probing program
(under DOS) and send me the results, especially if you have a
non-5186 or non-viper card. Simple instructions are included.

Some of you have said that you would like to help us, but you're not
experienced with this type of programming. But no one is working on
this project was previously experienced with this stuff. We could use
help from other such brave, humble programmers :-)

We have decided to start using our own mailing-list (NOT associated
with the XFree86 development team) for develpoment of code devoted
specifically to the Viper, untill we get up to speed -

I'd like to encourage you to join this list and help us any way you can!
Please send requests to join our development list to our founder and
list maintainer Andy Piziali at linux_viper-request@piziali.lonestar.org 
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IF you are willing to _contribute_ something.
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Sixgraph/Orchid/etc. P9000 owners are welcome to try to work with us.

I'd like to know which of you has gotten the "Viper Programming
Guide" from Diamond. If you have it PLEASE let me know even if you
told me before.

We have been encouraged by news of Viper drivers. One posting says
that SCO's Viper driver performed 165k Xstones, vs. 130k for whatever
is second best. I heard of a Viper driver from "Metrolink Metro-X"
for Unixware - "Running 1280x1024x8 and seems to be fine". I have
corresonded with a guy writing a NEXSTEP Viper driver, and with Frido
the DOS-Viper vesa driver writer.  We have gotten advice and
education from the XFree86 team. It seems that we have enough
information now to write the driver, just not enough time or
expertise to get it done soon. We have been experimenting with P9000
programming with some success!

The VGA register-probing program might help us improve on the interim
VGA driver.  If we could just figure out the proper VGA register
setup, and the fairly well documented XFree86 generic vga servers, we
could run 800x600x16 color or 1024x768 mono.

For those of you who would like to attack the VGA problem, I can give
specific advice, through our mailing list, about what documents are
needed , where to get them (free) and where to look in them, and I'll
help any way I can.

	Thanks,
		Harry

Kodachrome,
It gives us those _nice bright_ colors ... Gives us the _greens_ of summers
Makes you think all the world's a _sunny_day_, oh yeah !!
I got a _Nikon_ camera ... I love to take a _phot_o_graph_
So Momma, don't take my Kodachrome away !                     -- Paul Simon