rommel@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Kai-Uwe Rommel) (05/18/91)
I have tested the Trident Super-VGA drivers for PM 1.2 under 1.3 with a Trident 8900 card with 512k. The drivers work and do not have any problems with DOS-Box, garbage on the screen etc. They respect the DIP switch settings for interlaced/non-interlaced mode. The card&driver benchmark about 15-20% slower than an ET 4000 card with drivers for the same modes. There are three drivers: w800.dll, i.e. 800x600x16, w1024.dll (1024x768x16 with small font) and w1024f.dll (1024x768x16 with large font). The w1024f.dll driver uses 64x64 icons but it can be patched to 32x32 icons at location 0x2D202 from "40 00 40 00" to "20 00 20 00" with a binary file editor. I liked the w1024f.dll patched to small icons best of all three drivers. In interlaced mode of the card, all drivers worked on a NEC 3D class monitor. In non-interlaced mode all required a better monitor such as a NEC 4D or Nanao 9070s/9080i. Even the 800x600 mode uses different sync frequencies (higher refresh rate) at this DIP switch setting. Although slower than the ET 4000 card/drivers, they seem pretty fast (fast enough) compared to the Windows 3.0 drivers. When moving Windows around on the screen, you don't see them moving under PM, they just appear quickly on their new location. Under Windows 3.0 the comparable drivers are unbelievable and unusable slow at this operation. Moving the Program Manager's Window of about 600x400 to another location took several seconds under Windows 3.0! I have noticed this difference also with the ET 4000 drivers for Windows and OS/2 PM, but not so big as with the Trident drivers. (Anyone still asking why OS/2 is much better than Windows 3.0 ? :-)) One problem was: the Trident card did not work together with a Hercules mono card in the system under OS/2. But it seems that this was a BIOS problem of the card and it may not appear with different Trident cards. I have not tested the drivers with a Trident 8800 card. The 8900 card showed a very clear and nice picture on the screen - different than the old 8800 cards which often (always?) show a bad picture. Kai Uwe Rommel /* Kai Uwe Rommel, Munich ----- rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de */ DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt handler, and always will be. -Russell Williams
rommel@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Kai-Uwe Rommel) (05/18/91)
Hmm, you may be asking, "Does this man not have anything other to do than testing video drivers for OS/2?". But I think an OS with a graphical user interface *need* higher screen resolution and the acceptance of OS/2 will be greatly increased by availability of video drivers for the most common Super VGA cards. I have seen working drivers for Paradise, ET-4000 and Trident cards for OS/2 1.2 and 1.3 so far, only the Video7 drivers are really buggy and nearly unusable until now. Kai Uwe Rommel /* Kai Uwe Rommel, Munich ----- rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de */ DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt handler, and always will be. -Russell Williams