tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) (12/29/90)
Several of our older 386s have ATI VGA Wonder cards in them. They were causing serious problems when I'd try to display a DOS window on the screen in 800x600/16 mode: the screen woul stretch to about 150% vertically, and wrap around at the top. Since they were old v3 boards with an outdated BIOS, I called ATI tech support and ordered a new BIOS, hoping that would cure it. Now, however, I am just evaluating a a brand-new VGA Wonder+ --- and it does the same damn thing! Starting up a DOS session in a window freaks out the card, and the only way to unfreak it is to exit Windows. Is this for real? Did I miss something in the installation? Should I just stay away from ATI? [ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ] [ "i don't even know what street canada is on" -- al capone ]
dan@rna.UUCP (Dan Ts'o) (12/30/90)
In article <1990Dec29.021634.3433@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes: >Several of our older 386s have ATI VGA Wonder cards in them. They were >causing serious problems when I'd try to display a DOS window on the screen in >800x600/16 mode: the screen woul stretch to about 150% vertically, and wrap >around at the top. It must be something else other than the ATI card since I've used the VGA Wonder with Windows 2.11 (386) and 3.0 on several different 386 machines, opening DOS windows in 800x600 and 1024x768 modes and everything is fine. Old Windows drivers from ATI used to have a few problems but newer versions (last 1.5 years) have worked well. Perhaps you need a new driver, or maybe its your BIOS (AMI and Phoenix work well, I've heard of problems with the AWARD BIOS). Cheers, Dan Ts'o 212-570-7671 Dept. Neurobiology dan@rna.rockefeller.edu Rockefeller Univ. rna!dan@nyu.edu 1230 York Ave. tso@rockvax.bitnet NY, NY 10021
tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) (12/31/90)
I previously wrote: > Several of our older 386s have ATI VGA Wonder cards in them. They were > causing serious problems when I'd try to display a DOS window on the screen > in 800x600/16 mode: the screen would stretch to about 150% vertically, and > wrap around at the top. I've received a number of suggestions by email, but I still have the same problem. Let me present a few more data items: * Same machine with Paradise VGA+ works just fine * The same problem occurs on both VGA Wonder and VGA Wonder+ * The same problem occurs using both the drivers shipped with the card, and with those at cica.cica.indiana.edu. * Hitting Alt-Enter (to fullscreen the DOS session) usually gives me a clean display until I return to the Windows screen. Once, however, Alt-Enter produced a text-mode window with the high bit turned on for all displayed characters! Any suggestions will be appreciated; please email them to me before this card gets thrown back at the salesman. :( [ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ] [ "i don't even know what street canada is on" -- al capone ]
medici@dorm.rutgers.edu (Mark Medici) (12/31/90)
tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes: |I previously wrote: |> Several of our older 386s have ATI VGA Wonder cards in them. They were |> causing serious problems when I'd try to display a DOS window on the screen |> in 800x600/16 mode: the screen would stretch to about 150% vertically, and |> wrap around at the top. | |I've received a number of suggestions by email, but I still have the same |problem. Let me present a few more data items: | * Same machine with Paradise VGA+ works just fine | * The same problem occurs on both VGA Wonder and VGA Wonder+ | * The same problem occurs using both the drivers shipped with | the card, and with those at cica.cica.indiana.edu. | * Hitting Alt-Enter (to fullscreen the DOS session) usually gives | me a clean display until I return to the Windows screen. Once, | however, Alt-Enter produced a text-mode window with the high bit | turned on for all displayed characters! | |>Any suggestions will be appreciated; please email them to me before this |card gets thrown back at the salesman. :( What monitor are you using? Perhaps it can't sync on the ATI's horizontal frequency, but has no problem catching the Paradise's frequency. I've had similar problems with my NEC MultiSync II on a Video-7 VEGA VGA.