WADS of WADS/WadsOfWads.1994.zip/WOWCD/CONFIG.DOC

Text File | 1993-03-03 | 13KB | 201 lines

    CONFIGURING VPIC

    VPIC must be configured to run correctly with your display board.  The  con-
    figuration process tells VPIC:
    1. The title you want for the menu.
    2. What VGA chip you have, so it can use the proper bank switching routine.
    3. How much memory you have (in 64K banks).
    4. The menu color you want (background:foreground).
    5. How to set the various modes you want to use.

    This method is used instead of trying to autodetect the VGA chip and  memory
    (unless you have a board that supports VESA) because:
    1. Some chips are very hard to detect, and memory on board is even harder.
    2. As new VGA chips are released, there is a delay before the detection is
       implemented in the program.
    3. The WHICHVGA program is provided to autodetect the VGA chip and memory,
       but it fails on some chips.
    4. The config file provides more user control than automatic means.

    If you aren't sure which VGA chip your board uses,  you  can  run  WHICHVGA,
    which will try to identify your VGA chip and the amount of memory you  have.
    Also check for a list of some of the VGA boards each  chip  was used  on. If
    this doesn't work, you can remove the display board and look  at  the  label
    on the large chip with leads coming out all four sides. Sometimes,  you  can
    tell without removing the board by using DEBUG (or Turbo Debugger, Codeview,
    or any debugger) and 'dumping' the contents of display  BIOS.  To  do  this,
    enter DEBUG at the DOS prompt and you  will  get  a  -  prompt.  Then  enter
    dC000:0 to display the first part of display BIOS. To  dump  more  of  BIOS,
    juts enter d. You may recognize the chip manufacturers name  here,  such  as
    ATI, Trident, Tseng, Paradise, etc. To exit DEBUG, just enter q.

    If WHICHVGA comes back with VESA, that means that your  board  supports  the
    VESA standard, which offers a standard interface for VPIC to  your  SuperVGA
    display adapter. It defines the SuperVGA extended modes that your card  will
    do, and has a standard interface for setting the mode  and  bank  switching,
    etc. You  may  have  received  a  VESA  `Terminate and Stay Resident'  (TSR)
    program with your VGA board. If so, you are encouraged to use it,  since  it
    more or less guarantees that VPIC will work with your display card. The only
    disadvantage of VESA is concerned with scrolling the VGA screen, since there
    is no standard interface for setting the top of screen beyond 16 bits  (line
    81 at 800x600x256, line 102 at 640x480x256, or  line  204  at  320x200x256).
    This version of VPIC automatically reads the VESA  info  from  your  display
    BIOS, and uses the VESA interface. If you enter VPIC  with  the  /v  option,
    VESA info is ignored and VPIC uses the  configuration  file  info;  this  is
    helpful when VESA returns info VPIC isn't expecting or wrong info; the older
    S3 cards (Orchid Fahrenheit 1280, Diamond Stealth, etc)  return  wrong  VESA
    info, and need the /v option so they use  the  configuration  file  info.  A
    generic VESA.CFG file is supplied for you to play with  to  try  to get your
    VESA card to work; see below on what each entry means;  again,  you  have to
    use the /v option to enable this configuration info. The CIRRUS54.CFG config
    file is an example of how to modify the generic VESA.CFG.

    If the top line in VPIC says VESA,  then VPIC is using VESA info returned by
    your SVGA card.  If the only resolution listed is 320x200, there is probably
    a problem with your memory manager.  To verify this, try booting with from a
    DOS floppy with no memory manager. I only exclude B000-B7FF (used by Windows)
    and C000-C7FF (Video ROM),  and  I found that stealth mode confuses the SVGA
    VESA routines, so I don't use stealth.  On the other hand, the Trident 8900c
    returns VESA hi-color modes which it cannot do,  so you have to lock (Alt C)
    it into 256 colors.

    The current VPIC config file VGA chips and the VGA chip manufacturers are:
    VGA Chip    Manufacturer/version        Comments
    =================================================================
    ACUMOS     Acumos                  Voltane, No. 9 GXiTC, others
    AHEADA     Ahead ver A             Older Ahead cards.
    AHEADB     Ahead ver B             Ahead VGA Wizard/Deluxe.
   *ATIOLD     ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 65h   ATI ver 1 chip, VGAWonder.
   *ATINEW     ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 55h   ATI ver 2 up chip, VGAWonder+.
               For the ATI Ultra, be sure to run ATI's HDILOAD program first to
               activate the 8514A interface for the 1024x768x256 mode.
    CIRRUS     Cirrus CL-GD 500/600    MaxLogic MaxVGA boards NOT SUPPORTED YET.
    CHIPSTECH  Chips & Technology 82C452   Cardinal, Older Boca.
    EVEREX     Original Everex chip
    EVBIOS     Everex 673, etc         Has bank switching built into BIOS.
    GENOA      Genoa (Sim ET 3000)     5300/6300 = 256K, others = 512K.
    HEADLAND   Headland HT-208         Used on VGA-1024i.
    NCR        NCR                     Boca, PVGA 1024i, etc
    OAK        Oak
    PARADISE   Paradise                Older Paradise cards.
    PRIMUS     Primus                  Used in Galaxy 2000 cards.
    REALTEK    Realtek                 Used in RTVGA boards.
   *S3         S3 GUI Accelerator      Used on Orchid Fahr 1280, Diamond Stealth,
                                        Genoa Windows VGA, etc.
    TRI88BR    Trident TVGA 8800BR     Used on older Trident boards, 128K banks.
    TRI88CS    Trident TVGA 8800CS     Used on older Trident boards (Maxxon)
    TRI89      Trident TVGA 8900       Latest Trident VGA chip, 1M memory avail.
    TS3000     Tseng ET 3000           Used on early Genoa, Orchid, others.
    TS4000     Tseng ET 4000           Recent Orchid, STB, other, 1M memory.
    TS4000HI   Tseng ET 4000 HiColor   Does 32K colors to 800x600, 1M memory.
    WD90C      Western Digital WD90C00  Recent Paradise cards, same operation.
    VIDEO7     Video 7                 Earlier Video 7 boards, BIOS bank switch.
                                        Hewlett Packard SVGA.
    ZYMOS      Zymos Poach 51          True Tech HiRes and others.
    VESA       VESA Standard           For boards which have VESA in BIOS.
    * For ATI boards, certain modes may not be enabled (such as 800x600)  unless
      you choose the proper (or custom) monitor in ATI's INSTALL program. On the
      older S3 cards, VESA returned the wrong info, so use the /v option.

    As new chips become available, they will be added to this list. Run WHICHVGA
    to find your VGA chip (works most of the time), and then run CONFIG and find
    a CFG file using that VGA chip. Check that the modes agree with the graphics
    modes in your manual (16 and 256 color modes only); if they match your  card
    exactly, use that CFG file by pressing ENTER. If not, copy the closest  file
    to a new filename with extension CFG and change the modes to agree with your
    manual. Make the title and menu color whatever you like  (see  CONFIGURATION
    FILE FORMAT). Then  rerun  CONFIG,  pick  that  file,  and  press  ENTER  to
    configure VPIC. There are numerous configuration files which come with VPIC,
    but there are so many boards out there that I can't list all of them.

    MENU CONFIGURATION
    To configure VPIC, make sure that VPIC, CVPIC,  CONFIG,  and  all  the  .CFG
    files are in the current directory. By running the CONFIG program, VPIC  can
    be configured from a menu. CONFIG lists all the configuration files (with  a
    .cfg extension) in the current directory, and shows you the contents of each
    as you move around the list using the cursor keys. ESCape aborts the  CONFIG
    program without changing VPIC, and ENTER configures VPIC for the highlighted
    file. Pressing a letter key jumps to next filename starting with that letter
    (or number). The mode descriptions include ax, bx, cx, dx, X, Y,  and  color
    fields from the config file; see below. You can try to match these with your
    manual if you aren't sure which SuperVGA card you have.

    MANUAL CONFIGURATION
    You can use CVPIC to configure VPIC manually by entering:
         CVPIC config_file[.ext]
    where the default extension is .cfg and  config_file  is  the  configuration
    file you want to use. This is what CONFIG does when you press ENTER from the
    menu.




    CONFIGURATION FILE (.CFG) FORMAT
    CVPIC ignores leading spaces and blank lines in the file, and all characters
    after a semicolon are considered comments and ignored. The .CFG file contains
    the following lines, which can be up to 150 characters in length each:

        1. Board name, which will appear in the VPIC menu. This is user  define-
           able, and could be something like 'Joe's VGA Board'.

        2. VGA CHIP should be one of the names supported  by  VPIC;  see  above.
           Upper or lower case is OK.

        3. The number of 64K banks of display ram usable  for  pictures  (1  for
           standard VGA (no extended modes), 4 for 256K, 8 for 512K, 16 for 1M).

        4. Menu text color. A number whose value is  background*16 + foreground.
           The allowable background colors are  0  thru  7,  and  the  allowable
           foreground colors are 0 thru 15. This number is easiest to figure  if
           entered in hex (prefixed by 0x); then the 1st digit is the background
           color (0-7) and the 2nd digit is  the  foreground  color  (0-F).  The
           digits correspond to black (0), blue (1),  green (2),  aqua (3),  red
           (4), violet (5), brown (6), and white (7), and  the  digits  8-F  are
           intensified versions of the 0-7. For example, 0x3E would tell VPIC to
           use bright yellow text on an aqua background. CONFIG gives the  value
           in hex, and the corresponding foreground-background colors.

        5 thru n. The following lines describe the modes supported by the board.
          Each line is of the form: F1 F2 AX BX CX DX W H C BPL MR G P B
          where:
            *  F1 = 0 for 16 color modes, 1 for 256 color modes, > 1 for  Sierra
               DAC modes (for Targa's only) as follows:
                    2 => 15 bits/pixel (32,768 colors)
                    3 => 16 bits/pixel (65,536 colors)
                    4 => 24 bits/pixel (16,777,216 colors)
            *  F2 = 0 for EGA (640x350x16) with 64 colors to choose from, and  1
               for all others modes (which have 256,000 colors to choose from).
            *  AX,BX,CX,DX  register values used to set this mode. Preceding the
               numbers by 0x indicates hex; ie., 0x10 = 16. Using 8514 for AX
               indicates an 8514A interface, where BX is the mode.
            *  W, H, C  are width, height, colors in this mode. For 24 bit modes
               the colors field has the color order; 123=>BGR, 321=>RGB.
          Additional Information if known
            *  BPL is the bytes per scan line for this mode.
            *  MR is the maximum row for this mode; 0 => calculate from banks.
            *  G is the bank granularity in Kbytes; for instance,  the  Paradise
               has 4K banks.
            *  P is the number of color planes; usually 1 for  256  color  modes
               and 4 for 16 color modes. However, the ATI in 1024x768x16 and the
               S3 in 800x600x16 thru 1280x1024x16 uses 1 plane and 2 pixels/byte;
               this is sensed when colors=16 and planes=1.
            *  B is the number of 64K banks this mode can use; 0 => use banks
               from 3 above.
            *  WinA, WinB apply only to config files with VESA chip. Generally
               only WinA is used, but a few boards use both.

          The modes amy be entered in any order, but listing all  the  VGA  (256
          color) modes followed by the EGA (16 color)  modes,  followed  by  the
          Sierra DAC modes makes sense, and the mode numbers can  be  determined
          by looking at the configuration file.

          For specifying the mode N from the command line (/mN option for VPIC), the
          mode numbers increase with increasing resolution and can be found from
          the menu screen as follows:
            *  The 256 color modes are numbered 1 thru 10 starting at 320x200.
            *  The 16 color modes are numbered 11 thru 20 starting at 640x350.
          If you are configured with the Sierra DAC, Targa's will be automatically
          shown in 32K colors if you pick a resolution supported  by  the  board
          for the Sierra DAC.