🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May16.025135.642@pinhead.pegasus.com> todd@pinhead.pegasus.com (Todd Ogasawara) writes:
]In article <1991May10.130609.7369@hellgate.utah.edu> u-mwong%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Michael Wong) writes:
]>   I'd like to get some opinions from people who own one of these items
]>I've listed above.  Particularly, I'd like more information on the Everex
]>VRAM SVGA card.   How does it speed compare with most other cards?  It has
]>1Meg RAM and supports up to 1024x768 @256 colors and 1280x1024 @16 colors.
]We had an Everex VRAM VGA card for a while and I would recommend against
]buying it until Everex gets their driver problems under control. We had one
]in an Everex Step 386/33 with all parts from Everex (including drives,
]memory, EverSync CRT, etc.). We found all kinds of DOS and Windows programs
]that just would not work with the VRAM in the system. So, we yanked it out
]and put in a less sophisticated Everex card (I can't recall the model # at
]the moment) and now everything works.
]
]We came to this conclusion, btw, after numerous calls to software vendors,
]the local Everex distributer, and Everex tech support.

I just got a call from an Everex Product Manager who heard about the
posting above at Comdex. We had a chat about the problems I encountered.
Here are some of the salient points he raised.

1. The real problem (which I must admit, I neglected to address in my
   previous message) is that the card interacted badly with QEMM-386 v5.12.
   Ron (the Everex Product Manager who called) said that he has had other
   problems related to QEMM because of the "non-standard" programming
   techniques used in that product.
2. Ron suggested using 386MAX which is what they use in-house. I told him I
   was aware of the product but did not consider it since QEMM-386 is the
   standard memory manager for the site where we encountered the problem.
   But, the point is that if you want to use the Everex VRAM VGA card on a
   386 box, you should use 386MAX instead of QEMM-386. He also suggested
   PC-KWIK (which, now that I think about it, is a little puzzling since my
   recollection is that PC-KWIK's memory manager is a licensed version of
   QEMM-386... But I could be mistaken).
3. I told Ron that neither of the two Everex tech support people I spoke to
   came up with the suggestions he had. They were very helpful, though. I
   tried a bunch of the suggestions for manually adjusting QEMM's settings.
   Unfortunately, none of those suggestions worked. Neither of them
   suggested switching to 386MAX (I'm not sure we could have in this case
   anyway since QEMM is the "standard" for the site).
4. I could never get through to Quarterdeck's support lines. I tried
   calling literally dozens of times over a two week period only to get a
   busy signal every time.
5. The board that we ended up replacing the VRAM (and whose name I couldn't
   recall in my previous posting) is the Everex NI VGA card. It is a 512K
   SuperVGA card that works well even with QEMM-386 installed (at least for
   the applications on the one machine that I've seen the NI on).

Finally, I'd like to thank the net-person who mentioned my posting to Ron
at Comdex. The telephone discussion we had cleared up a lot of questions
that I thought I would never find the answer to after many many phone calls
to numerous tech support lines. And, it's nice to know that vendors
actually hear about these posting and respond to them.

-- 
Todd Ogasawara ::: Hawaii Medical Service Association
Internet       ::: todd@pinhead.pegasus.com
Telephone      ::: (808) 536-9162 ext. 7