wtm@neoucom.UUCP (03/05/87)
Hi group, I'd be interested in hearing comments from anybody that's encountered with the GB-1. I'm doing the dog work for a friend that was given the beast to review for a magazine that comes out once a week on newspaper that will remain nameless. In short the NEC Multisync GB-1 appears that it is supposed to be identical to the Tseng Labs Eva-480. Everything is laid out in the same place on the NEC and Tseng boards. The included software is the same, except the Word Eva-480 has been changed to GB-1. The problem is that I can't get the dag-gone GB-1 to do anything, except for text and lowly old CGA emulation. Well, I have been able to get the Included Dr. Halo II to work O.K. in what appears to be EGA mode. Notable packages that do not work are: PC-Paint Plus, GEM, and Windows 1.03, even when used with the NEC/Tseng supplied drivers. When I popped the Eva-480 into the computer that had formerly contained the GB-1, all the above mentioned software ran just fine. Hmmmm, I wonder... Time to take a look at the GB-1 to see if something looks funny with the board itself. Well I scurtinize the GB-1 for a while and note that the board is silk-screened "4464" next to the soldered-in RAM chips. The chips themselves are marked "4164". I take out a GB-1 that came in around Christmas and note the same discrepency in numbering. I look at the Eva, and lo, its chips agree with the silkscreened designation "4464". Now, I take it that the 4464s are 64K*4 bit chips, while the 4164s are 64K * 1 bit chips. I infer that the NEC board has only 1/4 the memory it should have, which could explain why it doesn't work worth shoot. One of the NEC cards was dated some time in late Nov., while the other was stamped "Dec 16, '86". I want to get this right since, it could get some wide circulation. If they goofed up, it looks like they did so for quite a while. So far, calls to NEC haven't elicited anything beyond "So-and-so will call you back..." To me, that seems like a tacit acknowledgement that they have a problem, as if I was wrong, I'm sure they would be quick to set the facts straight before bad press got around. --Bill Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM email: wtm@neoucom.UUCP phone: 216-325-2511
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (03/06/87)
I wrote an article complaining about having a lot of problems with a NEC GB-1 EGA-compatible graphics board. Closer inspection revealed that the ram chips really were 64K * 4 bits. The type designation was actually 41-464, a numbering methodology that could be easily confused. The incompatibility problem turned out to be in the ROM bios that was supplied by Tseng Labs. Interestingly, the GB-1 was able to run most graphics programs in a PC-Designs AT clone machine. Tseng Labs sent us a replacement BIOS ROM dated 1-6-1987, which allowed windows and and EGA-paint to run on all our clone machines. I'm not sure how one would obtain a recent EGA BIOS rom for the GB-1 directly from NEC, as they have yet to return our calls. Tseng is obviously not in the habit of providing customer support for NEC!!, nor should they be. The only program that I can not get to run correctly is Graph In The Box, which will only display in CGA mode, even if set for EGA. --Bill