Phoenix Technologies Ltd is shipping the new PhoenixView/LC, a VGA video BIOS for the flat-panel displays found in portable or palmtop systems, and PhoenixView, a new VGA video BIOS for desktop personal computers. The Norwood, Massachusetts-based company says it has shipped the software to 29 manufacturers that are developing 80386SX and 80386SL-based notebooks. Improvements in video performance are said to be apparent in graphics drawing, Windows 3.0, three dimensional imaging, support for active-matrix colour liquid crystal display panels, character-text write-to-screen and display of scanned images. It is based on the PhoenixView code base, but modified for power management functions, and there is support for functions like simultaneous display on cathode-ray tube desktop monitors and LCD flat-panel monitors. The LC is compatibile with VGA, EGA, CGA, and MDA, there is a flexible design for chip-set customising with display options for grey-scale contrast-control. It supports up to 64 simulated shades, reverse video, text-mode contrast enhancement, and bold fonts, and there is has a pop-up user-interface utility called Focus, which is a terminate and stay resident utility providing both command line and hot-key access to video BIOS controlled features. Designed to work with PhoenixMiser power management software and the built-in power management features of other video chip sets, the VGA video BIOS code base is claimed to be 40% faster than its predecessor and competitive offerings. Other features include BIOS functions, modes, fonts, and monitor support which enable manufacturers to support the IBM VGA video standard. The company has also announced that 10 OEM customers have adopted its 80386SL BIOS for their notebook computers, and that it is co-operating with Intel on the Phoenix 80386SL Demo Board Evaluation programme, described as the first of a number of announcements to support the 80386SL BIOS. The programme is designed to accelerate product development on Intel’s 80386SL environments, and it provides for parallel development of hardware and system software. The Norwood company has announced also that it is shipping PhoenixPage PCL 5 interpreter to OEM customers. It is a compatible emulation of the Hewlett-Packard PCL 5 printer control language and is a device-independent software module dedicated to processing PCL 5 page description commands from applications running on a host system. It supports the imaging capabilities of Hewlett-Packard’s PCL 5 language and enhancements that include scalable fonts like Intellifont – the Agfa Compugraphic font scaling technology, in addition to Bitstream’s Speedo PCL 5 compatible fonts. Finally, Phoenix says that its system BIOS supports ACC Microelectronics’ single-chip AT controller, the ACC-2036, which integrates the logic of a 80286 or 80386SX AT-alike onto one 208-pin chip. The ACC-2036 is in CMOS and supports processors up to 25MHz. Also supported are shadow random access memory for BIOS and video, dynamic memory configuration, and fast-gate A20 switching and speed switching. And on a similar theme, National Semiconductor Corp says that Phoenix Technologies’ PhoenixPage PostScript-compatible software is available for its NS32CG160 imaging processor. Consequently, Pyramid Computer of Freiburg, Germany is introducing a LaserJet PostScript accelerator interface based on the 32CG160 and using the PostScript interpreter. Pyramid has been working with NatSemi and Phoenix to develop its new Mustang PostScript accelerator for Hewlett-Packard Laserjet Series II and compatibles. The Mustang is claimed to offer nearly twice the performance of the Apple LaserWriter NTX, and up to 10 times the performance of existing Hewlett-Packard Co LaserJet-compatible PostScript cartridges.
