[comp.windows.ms] Problem with Windows 3.0's 386 Enhanced Mode

tachyon@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Tane' Tachyon) (12/23/90)

[I'm posting this for a friend; please reply to him at
 midnight@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us ]
 
I have a 16MHz Zenith 386 with two meg and a Video Seven VEGA VGA.
I just installed Windows and am having trouble running in 386
Enhanced mode:  it comes up OK, but the display is garbled.
 
Symptoms are the opening screen looks fine, then it switches to a
small flickery version, then it puts some (what looks like)
character mode crud on the screen, then it blanks.  Moving the
mouse or pressing Alt-F4 causes white flicker.
 
Standard mode works fine, but enhanced mode is what I got Windows
for!  Is the problem in the Zenith, the VEGA card (the flicker
looks suspiciously like its 800x600 mode), or ???

brent@well.sf.ca.us (Brent Southard) (12/24/90)

In article <10356@darkstar.ucsc.edu> midnight@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
>
>[I'm posting this for a friend; please reply to him at
> midnight@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us ]
> 
>I have a 16MHz Zenith 386 with two meg and a Video Seven VEGA VGA.
>I just installed Windows and am having trouble running in 386
>Enhanced mode:  it comes up OK, but the display is garbled.
> 
>Symptoms are the opening screen looks fine, then it switches to a
>small flickery version, then it puts some (what looks like)
>character mode crud on the screen, then it blanks.  Moving the
>mouse or pressing Alt-F4 causes white flicker.
> 
>Standard mode works fine, but enhanced mode is what I got Windows
>for!  Is the problem in the Zenith, the VEGA card (the flicker
>looks suspiciously like its 800x600 mode), or ???

Doesn't the VEGA card take up all sorts of address space beyond the normal
VGA ROM area (C800)?  If so, you may want to explicitly tell Windows to
exclude those areas from its EMS mapping.  To do this enter lines like the
following in the [386enh] section of your SYSTEM.INI file for each address
range you want to exclude:

EMMExclude=D000-DFFF

It sounds like Windows is trashing your video memory, or vice versa.  Read
the SYSINI*.TXT files in your Windows directory for other enhanced mode
customization options, and be sure to have your VEGA manual handy!

Brent Southard


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