david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter) (05/12/88)
I set the EVGA card to connect to a CGA monitor I have lying around. Told it to boot in CGA mode. Machine boots ok. Xenix boot gives me ":" prompt. I hit return (this is using the 2.2.3 installation floppy, of course.) Control is transferred to Xenix (presumably). CGA monitor loses horizontal sync; NEC Multisync +, which was wierded out by the 15 kHz CGA, syncs up, with same bogus screen as before: accented e's where blanks ought to be, wierd characters where installation script outputs normal stuff, bottom line of screen contains upper half of accented e's, lower half cut off. Made copy of installation floppy and added "stty C80x25" in /etc/rc. Didn't help. Xenix is running but it is printing the wrong characters (or, more properly, it has set the EVGA into a funny mode.) Note: there is no way to tell the card to be a plain-vanilla CGA. However, I have disabled its "autoswitch" circuit. Question: why is Xenix 2.2.3 ignoring the switch settings on the EVGA card? Don't those get translated by the ROM BIOS into data around 0:400, which Xenix should look at? Question 2: Xenix 2.2.3 is apparently insisting I have a Compaq VGA, even when the EVGA is strapped to be an EGA with a CGA monitor. This causes the monitor to lose sync when Xenix switches the card to VGA mode. Can this damage the monitor if left this way? -- David Schachter atari!daisy!david 2nd choice: well!davids