Matrox Support Information
The Drivers
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Jim Lowe and Mark Tinguely wrote
the driver for FreeBSD. It works
with all currently available versions of FreeBSD. There is no driver to
download. It is a standard feature of the operating system. To enable it,
edit your kernel config file and add the following line:
device meteor0
Chances are that it will work "out of the box" without having to define
additional devices or options in the kernel.
Once you've remade the kernel, you'll want to make the device. As root,
do the following:
cd /dev
./MAKEDEV meteor0
You're done. Look in the applications section to see what applications
you can use to test it out.
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Get your Linux driver from ftp.rwii.com.
Take a look at the README file from
version 1.4c of the linux driver.
The Linux kernel lacks the ability that BSD-based kernels have to allocate
large contiguous blocks of memory for device drivers that need it. The
"bigphysarea" patch to the kernel is often needed to make up for this deficiency.
A good source for this is http://www.uni-paderborn.de/fachbereich/AG/heiss/linux/bigphysarea.html.
You can browse the distribution and look
at READMEs and examples and stuff.
Hardware mini-FAQ
There is not much data out there, but this FAQ answers
a lot of the commonly asked questions about chipset compatibility.
Applications
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Vic
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vic is a network video tool
which supports the Matrox Meteor on the Intel platform. It grabs video
off the Meteor and receives other video sources from the network. It can
work point-to-point between two people, or it can operate in multicast
mode to connect many people.
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FreeBSD
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Download the sources as is. They'll compile and run.
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Linux
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I've heard of two Linux success stories on the net. I can't verify any
of this information, since I don't run Linux currently. These links are
provided as is.
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Metcap
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Metcap is a program I wrote that is basically cribbed from some source
that Jim Lowe put in his man page. The code in the man page didn't compile
directly, and it wasn't very nice. This code will grab one frame and write
it to a file in PPM format.
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Tk/Tcl Widget
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Heiko Teuber announced
the first version of a Tcl/Tk-Widget for the Matrox Meteor Framegrabber.
It is called meteor_fgrab_widget_0.7.tgz. You can find it at ftp://tutor.oc.chemie.th-darmstadt.de/pub/meteor/.
With it comes a little Tcl/Tk front-end to demonstrate the functionality
of the widget.
Mailing List
There is a mailing list at rwii.com. This list is
for users and developers, both on FreeBSD and Linux, to share ideas, applications
and ask questions about using the drivers. You won't get much help here
if you're trying to do things with Windows NT or Windows 95.
NEW: Paolo Gaudiano
has created a threaded, searchable mailing
list archive . It's very good.
Disclaimers
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I'm not an authority. I didn't write the drivers. However, I've got several
Pentiums running with the Meteor boards under both operating systems, so
I can tell you a few things that I've discovered.
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Also, if you're the owner of some information, and your information indicates
that my information is incorrect, please send me your information so I
can update my information. Cool?
Paco Hope
Multimedia Networks Group
Department of Computer Science,
University of Virginia
paco@cs.virginia.edu
Last modified: Monday, March 23, 1998 at 08:44:14