[comp.sys.mac.programmer] Color QD bug?

peltz@cerl.uiuc.edu (Steve Peltz) (11/23/89)

We've got a simple little INIT that we use here that reprograms the Apple Video
card to produce a larger screen size (using a multisync monitor). Everything
works just fine, with a couple of little understandable quirks (like it
crashes if you select 256 colors, since there isn't enough memory with more
than 512 lines, and the person who wrote it chose to move the image to the
beginning of video memory instead of offset a bit, so changing the pixel
depth makes the image shift and leaves garbage, but that's all beside the
point).

One thing that appears to break with this is very strange: the palette manager
will no longer allow animated colors! We can change a color entry directly,
but for some reason the palette manager won't do it. Since animated colors
work just fine with other large screen monitors, and the color manager routines
to change an entry work just fine, I can only surmise that there is a kludge
hacked patch in the palette manager that is checking for the Apple Video card
and assuming it must be 640x480. Any ideas on how to make our INIT work better?
Note that the palette manager SAYS it accepts the animated color request, but
actually trying to change the color fails. Other functions of the palette
manager appear to work fine, and all functions of the color manager work.

Related, I noticed that Chuck Yeager looks green when you crash and burn in AFT
if you're running a current system. This does NOT happen when running our big
screen INIT. What it looks like is that when the dialog box comes up, something
in the system is now forcing the menu bar to display, which zaps the palette
that AFT has used to display the screen; consequently, the picture looks
terrible. This did NOT used to happen. Why does the big screen INIT prevent
the menu bar from plotting when a dialog box comes up in this situation? I
could understand if the palette manager interactions prevented it from zapping
the palette due to the previously noted problem, but I'd still expect the
menu bar to show up, maybe with the wrong colors in the Apple menu. Why does
the system now display the menu bar, when it didn't used to?
--
Steve Peltz (almost) CFI-G
"Monticello traffic, Glider 949 landing 18, full stop"