🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:39:05 -0500, Scott MacKenzie
<scottm@mpx.com.au> wrote:

>Could anyone shed any light on how I might get access to the 15/16 bit
>colour depths which my card supports but which are not available to me
>at present.  (Using Warp v3.0)


I've been trying to do the same thing since last Aug. I've had
absolutely no luck finding drivers. So far I've settled for 15 bit
color in WINOS2 full screen sessions only by replacing the
fdisplay.drv driver with the Tseng drivers. Other than that, I've got
a Cirrus 5429 and a Trident 9440 as replacements for the Tseng -
neither of which work with my motherboard.

Please keep my email address around in case you have better luck than
I did.

Marc

marcb@cips.ca

In <32f2f313.711773@news.edmonton.telusplanet.net>, marcb@cips.ca (Marc) writes:
>On Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:39:05 -0500, Scott MacKenzie
><scottm@mpx.com.au> wrote:
>
>>Could anyone shed any light on how I might get access to the 15/16 bit
>>colour depths which my card supports but which are not available to me
>>at present.  (Using Warp v3.0)
>
>
>I've been trying to do the same thing since last Aug. I've had
>absolutely no luck finding drivers. So far I've settled for 15 bit
>color in WINOS2 full screen sessions only by replacing the
>fdisplay.drv driver with the Tseng drivers. Other than that, I've got
>a Cirrus 5429 and a Trident 9440 as replacements for the Tseng -
>neither of which work with my motherboard.
>
>Please keep my email address around in case you have better luck than
>I did.
>
I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
driver to see if that would work?  If it doesn't, hitting alt f1
when the block comes on in the upper right corner on bootup
will allow you to switch back to vga and then you can install
the original drivers.

Also, Tseng labs has a web site,

http://www.tseng.com

There weren't any OS/2 drivers there except for
the ET6000, but there was a support e-mail
contact.  It might be worth a try asking them.

I hope that's of some interest,

Kevin

In <5cvp2g$5kh@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>, khamann@primenet.com writes:

[...HiColour modes with Tseng ET4000AX...]

>I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
>work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
>driver to see if that would work?  If it doesn't, hitting alt f1
>when the block comes on in the upper right corner on bootup
>will allow you to switch back to vga and then you can install
>the original drivers.

I use these drivers with my ET4000/w32p and they only offer 256-colour
modes up to 1024x768 even though my card and monitor are capable of
1280x1024, and HiColour modes at lower resolutions. So I doubt that
these would solve the original poster's problems.

>Also, Tseng labs has a web site,
>
>http://www.tseng.com
>
>There weren't any OS/2 drivers there except for
>the ET6000, but there was a support e-mail
>contact.  It might be worth a try asking them.

Please post the results back to here if you get any.

	Z

 -- These views are the opinion of this author only.  |   Eat Right. Exercise.
  / Not to be distributed for profit.                 |        Die Anyway.     
 /  I am not interested in your advertising material. |                        
 -- http://student.uq.edu.au/~cs321509 ----------------> Cynicism & Negativity 

>>Could anyone shed any light on how I might get access to the 15/16 bit
>>colour depths which my card supports but which are not available to me
>>at present.  (Using Warp v3.0)
>
>
>I've been trying to do the same thing since last Aug. I've had
>absolutely no luck finding drivers. So far I've settled for 15 bit
>color in WINOS2 full screen sessions only by replacing the
>fdisplay.drv driver with the Tseng drivers. Other than that, I've got
>a Cirrus 5429 and a Trident 9440 as replacements for the Tseng -
>neither of which work with my motherboard.

Just last week I _finally_ got 65535 colours in with my Et4000 PCI card. First you 
must have 2meg or RAM on the video card.

Also, it seems that the SVGA.EXE program has a slight bug in it if you card has a
CH8398_RGB from Chrontel ram dac on it.

Load SVGA.EXE in a hex editor (make a backup copy first) and search for the
string "B8 09 00 C9" (there hould only be one) and change it to "B8 07 00 C9".

Run svga from dos ot recreate the 

Worked for me...

In <5d15o5$3s6$2@nargun.cc.uq.oz.au>, cs321509@student.uq.edu.au (Z) writes:
>In <5cvp2g$5kh@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>, khamann@primenet.com writes:
>
>[...HiColour modes with Tseng ET4000AX...]
>
>>I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
>>work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
>>driver to see if that would work?  If it doesn't, hitting alt f1
>>when the block comes on in the upper right corner on bootup
>>will allow you to switch back to vga and then you can install
>>the original drivers.
>
>I use these drivers with my ET4000/w32p and they only offer 256-colour
>modes up to 1024x768 even though my card and monitor are capable of
>1280x1024, and HiColour modes at lower resolutions. So I doubt that
>these would solve the original poster's problems.
>
How much memory do you have on the card?  With 1 MB that sounds
correct, but with 2 MB you should be able to get 1280x1024x256 and
1024x768x65k.  The reason why OS/2 doesn't allow some of the
resolution/color modes that Windows allows is because OS/2 uses
32 bit color while Windows also allows 24 bit color.  There is/was
also a problem that some ET4000/W32P cards used different 
RAMDACs which didn't work well with the  OS/2 drivers.  Me I had
a ET4000/w32i which had the problem you're discussing, but in
my case it was a hardware problem with the ET4000/w32i
chipset only allowing 1024x768x65k colors interlaced.

Kevin 

In message <5d15o5$3s6$2@nargun.cc.uq.oz.au> - cs321509@student.uq.edu.au (Z)
writes:
:>
:>In <5cvp2g$5kh@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>, khamann@primenet.com writes:
:>
:>[...HiColour modes with Tseng ET4000AX...]
:>
:>>I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
:>>work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
:>>driver to see if that would work?  If it doesn't, hitting alt f1
:>>when the block comes on in the upper right corner on bootup
:>>will allow you to switch back to vga and then you can install
:>>the original drivers.
:>
:>I use these drivers with my ET4000/w32p and they only offer 256-colour
:>modes up to 1024x768 even though my card and monitor are capable of
:>1280x1024, and HiColour modes at lower resolutions. So I doubt that
:>these would solve the original poster's problems.

Hmmm, until I changed motherboards I was running a Tseng ET4000/w32p based
Diamond VLB card and it ran OK at 1024x768x65536 @ 75Hz. I was running Warp 3
with the drivers in TSENGW32.ZIP (or DSK) from the IBM ftp site. The trick is
that you must have the DOS based utility used to set the refresh rates for
your card. For my Diamond Stealth 32 VLB it was called SETMODE.EXE. Run it in
a fullscreen DOS session and use it to define which modes you want your card
to run at and what refresh rates to do at each resolution. Then without
switching away from the f/s session run SVGA ON DOS to generate an
SVGADATA.DOS file and copy that over \OS2\SVGADATA.PMI (after saving it) and
then shutdown and reboot. My card would also do 800x600@16.7m and any other
resolution possible with 2Mb RAM on the board.

The Tseng provided drivers are *ancient* and only support 256 colours.



Trevor Hemsley
(Trevor-Hemsley@dial.pipex.com or 75704.2477@compuserve.com)

In article <5cvp2g$5kh@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>, khamann@primenet.com wrote:
>In <32f2f313.711773@news.edmonton.telusplanet.net>, marcb@cips.ca (Marc) writes:
>>On Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:39:05 -0500, Scott MacKenzie
>><scottm@mpx.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>>Could anyone shed any light on how I might get access to the 15/16 bit
>>>colour depths which my card supports but which are not available to me
>>>at present.  (Using Warp v3.0)
>>
>>
>>I've been trying to do the same thing since last Aug. I've had
>>absolutely no luck finding drivers. So far I've settled for 15 bit
>>color in WINOS2 full screen sessions only by replacing the
>>fdisplay.drv driver with the Tseng drivers. Other than that, I've got
>>a Cirrus 5429 and a Trident 9440 as replacements for the Tseng -
>>neither of which work with my motherboard.
>>
>>Please keep my email address around in case you have better luck than
>>I did.
>>
>I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
>work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
>driver to see if that would work?

Most people with ET4000 boards have already used that driver, and a good
number have found it doesn't work properly (not more than 8 bit color under
OS/2, but 24 bit color works fine under Windows).

The best explanation I've found points the finger at a bug in the video driver
IBM never addressed:

From: edgewood@pobox.com (Ed Blackman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.setup.video
Subject: Re: Why can't I get more than 256 colours with 2meg ET4000 PCI card?
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 13:40:14 -0500
Message-ID: <Oo+0yU75ilvT089yn@pobox.com>

marcb@telusplanet.net (Marc Butler) wrote:
>edgewood@pobox.com (Ed Blackman) wrote:
>>I have the same problem here.  The problem does come from SVGA.EXE,
>>but it also seems to be related to the RAMDAC.  I've had reports
>>from others using the ET4000 w32p revision D chipset, but with a
>>different RAMDAC on the card (mine is the CH8398_RGB from Chrontel),
>>who were able to get SVGA.EXE to properly report the capabilities of
>>the card.
>
>Is there any other way to get SVGA to understand that the card is
>capable of more than 256 colors? I understand that its possible to
>edit an output from SVGA to set up refresh rates, can the same be done
>for the number of colors?

I've got to thank you, because your question caused me to take another crack
at getting >256 colors, and I finally did it.  I found an article on Dejanews
that mentioned that a patch could be applied to SVGA.EXE that would allow
cards with Chrontel RAMDACs to use more than 256 colors in OS/2.  Load
SVGA.EXE in a hex editor (make a backup copy first) and search for the string
"B8 09 00 C9" (there should only be one) and change it to "B8 07 00 C9".

The first time I tried this patch, it didn't work: the SVGADATA.PMI files that
the patched SVGA generated weren't correct.  I reinstalled the video drivers
and redid the patch, and it works now.  Right now my desktop is at 16 million
colors!

Ed

On 1 Feb 1997 08:56:00 -0700, khamann@primenet.com wrote:


>I'm guessing here, so please don't get too mad if this doesn't
>work *grin*, but have you tried using the ET4000/w32,w32i,w32p
>driver to see if that would work?

The ET4000AX is a 16 bit chip while the ET4000/w32 is a 32 bit chip,
or something like that. The drivers are incompatible.

>
>There weren't any OS/2 drivers there except for
>the ET6000, but there was a support e-mail
>contact.  It might be worth a try asking them.
>

My card is mfg by Cardex. They have a web site with the same drivers
as the Tseng site. I wrote to them and was given a Taiwan BBS number.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it to connect.