t-davidw@microsoft.UUCP (David Weigant) (11/27/89)
Hi, I hope you people can help me. I purchased several VGA cards and monochrome VGA monitors a few months back. They seem to support the resolutions of all the VGA modes just fine. The problem is the monitors will never display more than four shades of grey (including white and black). I have set to video modes that allow for 16 and 256 colors (which work perfectly on my color system) but will not display shades on the monochrome system. Is there a register on the VGA board that must be set in order to get the full range of shades. It may be specific to the Trident BIOS on the VGA cards but I really do not have a clue at this point. I do have some software that will specifically program the VGA card to 256 shades and this one piece of software seems to work fine. If anyone has any information regarding this and possibly how I might work around it, I would be most thankful. Oh, one other thing, I have a paradise 16+ VGA card, and it seems to display all of the shades just fine. This leads me to believe it has something to do specifically with the Trident BIOS. Thx a bunch, David Weigant Microsoft Product Support
brtmac@hobbes.ksu.ksu.edu (Brett McCoy) (11/27/89)
In article <9175@microsoft.UUCP> t-davidw@microsoft.UUCP (David Weigant) writes: >The problem is the >monitors will never display more than four shades of grey (including >white and black). I have set to video modes that allow for 16 and >256 colors (which work perfectly on my color system) but will not >display shades on the monochrome system. My guess is that you are trying to use monochrome monitors, and not greyscale monitors. When you use a monochrome monitor (such as any tty level monitor I think) you can not take advantage of the analog signals that the VGA board uses for producing the large number of colors that it does. My Orchid ProDesigner and Magnavox Greyscale VGA monitor give me what appears to be 256 shades of grey, although VGA cards are only capable of producing 64 true greyscales. Check your monitor. If it doesn't say that it is a greyscale monitor, or if it is a tty level monitor and not analog, then you probably will not be able to get greyscales out of it. -- Brett McCoy | God is real, unless declared integer brtmac@ksuvm.ksu.edu | bmc@phobos.cis.ksu.edu | If you don't get caught, brtmac@hobbes.ksu.ksu.edu | did you really do it?
t-davidw@microsoft.UUCP (David Weigant) (11/28/89)
In article <4950@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> brtmac@hobbes (Brett McCoy) writes: >In article <9175@microsoft.UUCP> t-davidw@microsoft.UUCP (David Weigant) writes: >>The problem is the >>monitors will never display more than four shades of grey (including >>white and black). I have set to video modes that allow for 16 and >>256 colors (which work perfectly on my color system) but will not >>display shades on the monochrome system. > >My guess is that you are trying to use monochrome monitors, and not >greyscale monitors. It is a grey scale monitor, I know because it works with my Paradise 16+ card. Also, it says in the documentation it is grey scale. And, one piece of software I own will run with the proper number of shades. thx again, David Weigant Microsoft Product Support
gerten@uklirb.UUCP (Rainer Gerten) (11/28/89)
In article <9179@microsoft.UUCP> (David Weigant) writes: >It is a grey scale monitor, I know because it works with my Paradise >16+ card. Also, it says in the documentation it is grey scale. > >And, one piece of software I own will run with the proper number of >shades. > Some software tests the address of the video-buffer. Some BIOS-implementations sets the buffer-address in dependance of the connected screen to A000, B000 or B800 and the videomode to 2, 3 or 7. Before using your software you should try the command MODE CO80 or MODE BW80. We had a similar problem with Smalltalk 80 and the monochrom monitor from IBM. After setting the VGA-card to color-mode everything was ok. +------------------------------------------------+ | Rainer Gerten | | University of Kaiserslautern | | West-Germany | | Mail: gerten@informatik.uni-kl.de | | Phone: 49(631)205-2510 | +------------------------------------------------+