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1997-02-17
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Help me!
or
The Trouble with Universal VESA Drivers
If you are reading this, you probably really feel you are in
trouble. Funny things may well have happened to your display
before, during, or even after, your attempt to run Coeli.
This document will be most helpful if you print it out now and
keep it by you as we try to work out what's wrong.
The problems you are encountering almost certainly centre
around your machine's inability to support the VESA standard
and/or the extent of your VESA driver's capacity to detect and
interact with your computer's graphics hardware.
For the former, I'm afraid the only remedies are drastic -
your machine is either too old for this version of Coeli, or
you need a newer video card. But in all likelihood, your
problem is the latter one: the VESA driver you have just tried
to load - and which has failed to configure itself correctly -
needs some help in recognising what sort of graphics setup
your PC is equipped with.
A less acute but similar manifestation of the problem may have
occurred while you were using Coeli: the display may have
appeared fragmented, jerked during screen updates, or text may
have overwritten itself.
If you are using the UniVBE universal VESA driver, your first
job is to bypass your computer's own VESA BIOS routines with
the -i switch ( see also UniVBE's documentation ). Type
UNIVBE -i < with your other parameters (see below) >
And please always remember to remove your old VESA driver from
the system if you decide to install UniVBE in its place. This
may necessitate erasing a line in autoexec.bat or config.sys
and then re-booting, so if you are at all unsure, consult a
good Dos guidebook (or someone in the know) first.
You may not yet have obtained your copy of UniVBE from the
sources listed at the end of this document, so before you read
my attempts to get you up and running with the Universal
driver, just check your PC's documentation and system floppies
again for anything relating to 'VESA', 'Super VGA' or 'SVGA'.
The people who manufactured the graphics board inside your
computer may have included proprietary VESA drivers with your
system. These will have been specifically tailored to your
graphics setup and should be dug out and tested if at all
possible. They may already be on your hard disk. If you find
them, you'll probably discover that they work fine, at least
in Coeli's mode 1 or 2.
(Having found the proprietary driver and installed it, try
typing COELI 2 at the Dos prompt from inside your Coeli
directory. I've a feeling you'll be relieved at what you see).
The filename of the driver will most likely simply be
VESA.EXE. You may need to search quite hard for it, but in
about 75% of cases VESA.EXE will be there somewhere. To test
it, all you need do is type VESA at the Dos prompt, then if
all's well, go to the Coeli directory and try typing COELI 2.
If Coeli now runs OK in mode 2 (640x480 resolution), you're
probably also all right for the default mode (800x600), the
mode in which Coeli runs best.
Now back to those problems with the *Universal driver. Because
this clever piece of software has to cater for potentially
scores of different graphics chipsets produced at various
phases of the 386+ PC's short history (by manufacturers with
different ideals about what makes the fastest display) it is
bound to diagnose things incorrectly sometimes. In the swiftly
changing world of the PC, no utility is ever infallible.
But you can help it along, especially if you know (or suspect)
a few simple facts about your system. For instance, if you
know how much video RAM you have (512k, 1 Mb, 2Mb etc) you
will be able to tell your VESA driver about this; If you know
what bulk of graphics data your board can shift around in one
go ( 8 bits, 16 bits, 24 bits, 32 bits etc), you will also be
able to inform the *Universal Driver of this. In fact, if you
can acquire just these two snippets of knowledge by consulting
your documentation or perhaps merely looking on the box your
PC came in, I can almost guarantee that you'll have Coeli -
and any other graphics applications which might require VESA -
up and running in no time.
And if you don't know precisely, try experimenting.
We'll now offer some suggestions as to what to type at the Dos
command line with some typical configurations, using the
excellent shareware VESA driver UniVBE from SciTech Software
(see below for how to obtain this utility, if you don't have a
copy already). Note: these instructions apply to versions 4.3
and 5.0 of UniVBE. If you have a different version, type
UNIVBE -?
to check that the command line switches are the same as those
below.
If you own a Pentium PC, please skip the next two paragraphs.
As it's a good idea always to start by trying low to medium
settings and working upwards rather than the other way round,
and this is assuming you don't actually know your setup, first
see what result you get by typing:
UNIVBE -M512 -D3
The -M parameter stands for memory, or RAM, and 512 kilobytes
was specified; -D stands for DAC (Digital to Analogue
Converter) and we specified 24-bit operations. This is
probably about right for 486 PC systems bought between 1992
and late 1993, but you could possibly have tried -M1024,
meaning 1 Mb of video memory, but not until the lower figures
first installed without hitches.
If your machine is post 1994 - either a 486 DX or Pentium -
then it is virtually certain that you will have at least 1 Mb
of video RAM, so set -M1024, and try -D3 as follows:
UNIVBE -M1024 -D3
If you have a 386 PC, or a 486 machine bought pre-1993, you
may have to be satisfied with
UNIVBE -M256 -D2
or, at a pinch,
UNIVBE -M512 -D3
If you get no joy, experiment with variations on the above for
a while longer, re-booting between each attempt, since you
never entirely know your luck... And don't forget, if the
screen scrambles alarmingly, don't panic: just hit the reset-
button quickly or CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer.
You're then ready to try another combination.
If you know the name of the graphics card inside your PC, and
UniVBE has failed to detect it (unlikely!), then you can add a
third parameter to the command line which will force the VESA
driver to use the instructions for that particular card in its
operations. first type UNIVBE -s0 for a list of the names the
driver will recognise, noting down the number which appears
before the name of your card. Then you can load UniVBE with
the -S<name> parameter and the two others which we discovered
above. It doesn't matter which order you type them, just as
long as there's a space between, and a hyphen immediately
preceding, each parameter. For instance, you discovered that
the name of your graphics chipset was Cirrus Logic Super VGA,
and that UniVBE knows it as number 18, so you would type
UNIVBE -S18 <and the other two parameters>
We would also strongly advise you to try and obtain the very
latest shareware version of UniVBE from SciTech Software
(USA, Australia, or UK) using the sources listed at the end of
this document. Don't forget also to read through SciTech's own
documentation thoroughly, specifically UNIVBE.DOC.
I hope I have enabled you finally to consult your Electric
Planisphere.
If not, your last recourse is to drop us a line, with details
of the problem, your system, and as much explanation of what
exactly happened and what didn't as you can cram onto the
page. I will have a final go at helping you.
Roger Hughes
Swimming Elk Software
Manskiventie 1031
16790 Manskivi
Finland.
E-mail: Swimming.Elk@sci.fi
For last minute Coeli updates and information, point your Web
browser at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/coeli/homepage.htm
* The best universal VESA driver is undoubtedly UniVBE from
SciTech Software.
If you don't already have a copy of UniVBE, it can be obtained
easily from the following sources:
The Public Domain and Shareware Library (PDSL)
Winscombe House
Beacon Rd
Crowborough
East Sussex
TN6 1UL
United Kingdom
Just ask for disk number 003813, where it will be found among
several other graphics utilities. PDSL's catalogue describes
it as the Universal VESA VBE v.4.3, 'a small TSR providing the
latest VESA BIOS extensions for most SVGA cards on the market'
Here are some numbers for PDSL:
Tel. 01892 663298
Fax. 01892 667473
BBS (8,N,1) 01892 661149 / 667090 / 667091
Or, if you have a modem, try one of these:
World Wide Web : http://www.scitechsoft.com
Internet/FTP : ftp.scitechsoft.com
Compuserve : GO VESA (file library 12)
America Online : Keyword VESA
Finally, SciTech Software's own direct mailing address is:
SciTech Software
5 Governors Lane,
Suite D
Chico, CA 95926
USA
Tel. (orders only) : 800-4UNIVBE
: 800-486-4823
Main & Technical Support: 916-894-8400
Fax 510-208-8026
UniVBE is copyright (c) 1993-94 SciTech Software.
Coeli (TM) and its documentation copyright (c) 1995, 1996
Swimming Elk Software.
All other registered trademarks and trademarks are the
property of their respective owners.