As soon as a pioneer in videocards, S3’s legacy is right this moment largely present in particulars like texture compression in addition to the sturdy presence of S3-branded videocards within the retro-computing world. There’s nevertheless a little bit of a humorous subject with a few of these S3 playing cards in what is commonly known as a ‘brightness bug’, however which as [Bits und Bolts] covers in a current video was truly a {hardware} function that we will as soon as once more blame composite video for.
This subject seems with AGP playing cards just like the Trio 3D, Trio64 and ViRGE, the place the brightness on the output sign is ready too excessive, simply seen with the washed out look on boot, the place particularly on CRTs you’d count on to see the great deep black background. Utilizing an S3 Trio 3D 2X card that was saved from the e-waste pile this so-called Pedestal Bit accountable is investigated and tweaked to point out what distinction it makes.
On the core is adjusting the black stage to make scanline adjustments simpler to detect for TVs, which is now not related for CRTs, LCDs, and so forth., whereas adjusting the brightness for one videocard in a system could cause points elsewhere, similar to when utilizing stated card alongside a 3dfx Voodoo II card or with inconsistent brightness ranges inside 3D video games.
Thankfully S3 supplied in-depth datasheets on their chips, together with find out how to tackle the accountable bit. After demonstrating the precept, the BIOS is then patched to set this Pedestal Bit to the worth of 0 on boot, fixing the problem as soon as and for all.
