[comp.windows.ms] Using 8514/A fonts in VGA modes

mikew@proton.LCS.MIT.EDU (Michael B. Williams) (07/21/90)

With his recent memory upgrade, a friend of mine now has enough
memory to run Windows 3.0 in 1024 by 768 mode.  You would think
that he'd be satisfied, but now he's griping about the text being too
small to read.  (Some people are never satisfied!)  Putting my jealousy
aside, I am asking the gurus of Usenet if there is a way to use the
8514/A fonts (which were designed for that resolution) in my
friend's Super VGA graphics mode.

One way to do this would be to copy the 8514/A fonts over the
VGA fonts--provided I knew which files were involved.  Or, I
could advise him to reinstall from DOS and tell Setup that he has
an 8514/A, then edit SYSTEM.INI to point to VGA.DRV instead
of 8514A.DRV.  Is there an easier way?  (Preferably one that's
been tested.)

Michael B. Williams                   |        /|  /|   )|  /|  /
NE43-527                              |       / | / |--< | / | /
Laboratory for Computer Science       |      /  |/  |___)|/  |/
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Internet: mikew@athena.mit.edu
545 Technology Square                 | CompuServe: 73667,3264
Cambridge, MA 02139                   | AT&T: (617) 253-6015

mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (07/21/90)

Someone posted earlier that you could install win3 as 8514 then change
system.ini to point to vga.drv  or vga800.drv (in my case). Well, I tried.
It didn't work on my Paradise+ 16. It only came up in real mode. I later
grepped all the ini files for 8514 and found that the driver is referred to
in at least one other place, I think two. Changing these led to disaster.

Hope this saves someone some time.

Milan
.

andrzej@bigsur.UUCP (Andrzej Bieszczad) (07/23/90)

In article <1990Jul20.184601.11601@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>,
mikew@proton.LCS.MIT.EDU (Michael B. Williams) writes:
> With his recent memory upgrade, a friend of mine now has enough
> memory to run Windows 3.0 in 1024 by 768 mode.  You would think
> that he'd be satisfied, but now he's griping about the text being too
> small to read.  (Some people are never satisfied!)  Putting my jealousy
> aside, I am asking the gurus of Usenet if there is a way to use the
> 8514/A fonts (which were designed for that resolution) in my
> friend's Super VGA graphics mode.
> 
> One way to do this would be to copy the 8514/A fonts over the
> VGA fonts--provided I knew which files were involved.  Or, I
> could advise him to reinstall from DOS and tell Setup that he has
> an 8514/A, then edit SYSTEM.INI to point to VGA.DRV instead
> of 8514A.DRV.  Is there an easier way?  (Preferably one that's
> been tested.)
> 
> Michael B. Williams                   |        /|  /|   )|  /|  /
> NE43-527                              |       / | / |--< | / | /
> Laboratory for Computer Science       |      /  |/  |___)|/  |/
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Internet: mikew@athena.mit.edu
> 545 Technology Square                 | CompuServe: 73667,3264
> Cambridge, MA 02139                   | AT&T: (617) 253-6015


Ensure that your applications will handle this. In my case (386Enh,
ATI 1024x768x16), Word for Windows would not work with the fonts for
8514. When I loaded for example Helvetica for VGA, the system fonts
changed as well, so it helped Win4Win, but the original idea was
gone.

I quit after two long evenings - 600x800 is much faster. Now I only
wait for 800x600x256.


=======================================================================
Andrzej Bieszczad (Bell-Northern Research, Ltd.)
USENET:  uunet!bnrgate!bigsur!andrzej
BitNet:  andrzej@BNR.CA
Surface: Dept. 7G12, P.O. Box 3511, Station C,    Phone: (613) 763-2259
         Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1Y 4H7         Fax:   (613) 763-3283
=======================================================================

rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) (07/23/90)

You can copy the 8514sys.fon, 8514oem.fon and 8514fix.fon file from the
distribution disks to your Windows System directory using the EXPAND
utility which is on disk 2. See the README.TXT or other doc for
description of the EXPAND program (don't remember the file name where
the usage was described).

Then you should look into your SYSTEM.INI for the line where the
vgafix.fon, vgaoem.fon and vgasys.fon appear (don't have my PC here and
don't have the left sides of the lines in mind). Replace the names with
the 8514*.fon names.

That's all

Kai Uwe Rommel
Munich
rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de

--

/*
 * Kai Uwe Rommel
 * Munich