[comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d] A problem

jacst30@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Joseph A Corella) (04/10/91)

	I hope someone can help me out.  I recently (Oct.90)
purchased a Micro Express 386SX with 4 Mb RAM, SVGA monitor,
and therefore 512K video memory. The facts are as follows:

	- The video card has 16 chips on it
	- at boot, the display says TRIDENT
	- PC Tools and Norton 5.0 only detect 256K of video
		memory
	- There is a graphics program known as GIFDESK 4.0,
		which I believe has been mentioned on this
		newsgroup.  It is supposed to detect your
		video driver and configure things
		accordingly.  However, if it does not, you can
		set the parameters yourself and make it run.
		When I run it, it doesn't work.  When I
		manually set it for Trident (either VGA or
		SVGA), it goes completely haywire (behaves the
		same as mentioned above).  When I set
		it to VGA, it works in black and white
		(the instructions say one must have at least
		512K of vid. mem. and SVGA to operate in color).

	My question : Have I been shafted?  Everything points
to 256K of memory, and I also am now not sure if the monitor
is SVGA (1024 x 768).  Does anyone know of a utility which
will correctly assess my video attributes, or any possible way
to straighten out this mess?  I sort of feel as though I'm
standing at the border of paranoid and stupid - Any help will
be appreciated.

						-Bill