arc@springs.cis.ufl.edu (Anthony Cherry) (02/16/91)
Hello NET! My name is Tony Cherry and I just bought a Gateway 386-25 machine. Everything is great except for some video compatability problems. The machine uses a Diamond Speedstar SVGA card with 1 meg video ram. Everything works great with programs--like Windows--for which Gateway provided drivers. It supports resolutions up through 1024x768x256. The problem is with Deluxe Paint II. It gives a short list of video card choices, of which the Speedstar is not one. Therefore, I can only do 640x480x16, no matter which of the cards I choose from the menu. DP II always says that my video card does not have 512k video ram, but it clearly has 1meg. I would appreciate any info on adding drivers to DP II or Speedstar compatability with other cards. Thanks to anyone who can offer assistance. Please email to arc@reef.cis.ufl.edu Seeeee Yaaaaaa TEECEE
timewarp@buhub.bradley.edu (Matthew Edens) (02/17/91)
I also have this problem. I am using a DTK 386-25 with 64k cache and an STB video card with the Tseng ET4000 chip set with 1 meg ram and DPII enhanced gives me the same message. Not enough RAM. My card is capable of 1024x768x256 and DPIIE will not let me use even the 640x400x16 mode. I would REALLY appreciate any help. email me at: timewarp@buhub.bradley.edu Thanx!!!! ------ Signature under construction
phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) (02/20/91)
Based on replies from a previous query I made about the Diamond Speedstar I have learned that the extended VGA modes are done in many different ways on different chip sets. Different boards of the same chip set should be compatible at the register level. They might be incompatible at higher mode levels based on differences in the video BIOS code. I am not surprised that a software package that does not support a particular board or chip set cannot correct determine how much memory it has. Where it has to look or what it has to do to find out could, and likely would, vary between these boards. The only thing to do is to urge the software vendor to support the board. I suppose one way of support is to write graphics programs that make direct use of MSW drivers. Then you can just plug in the drivers and go from there. The fractint graphics package supports a large number of different boards and chip sets. That should give you an idea of the scope of the problem. It would be nice if a standardized set of efficient graphics functions could be designed (not necessary at high levels like "draw a circle") as an interface standard so that drivers between this standard and the many SVGA standards could be handled. This would be similar to the FTP Software approach to interfacing ethernet boards. But I don't know if this can possibly be done as fast as direct register/memory access specifically optimized to one board. -- --Phil Howard, KA9WGN-- | Individual CHOICE is fundamental to a free society <phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> | no matter what the particular issue is all about.