Copyright: Visual Help Copyright® 1993 Firas Bushnaq


CONTENTS
WinMode

Place the cursor over the field(s) that you need help with. When the mouse pointer changes to a hand, click to display the help text for that field. Click again to make the pop-up text disappear.

© Copyright 1994 Cirrus Logic, Inc. - All Rights Reserved


About

The 'About' button will display a dialog box with the version number of WinMode and a copyright notice.


CACHE
Font Cache Size

The 'Font Cache Size' lets you set the amount of system memory that will be available for font caching.

Next to the font cache size are an up arrow and a down arrow. Click on the up arrow to increase the cache size. Click on the down arrow to decrease the cache size.

Font caching is a technique to increase the performance of Windows by saving the bitmaps of frequently used characters. The next time that the cached characters are needed, they are just copied instead of having to be built from scratch.

WinMode has tried to determine the correct setting for this field for you, but you may change it. Just remember that memory set aside for font caching will not be available for anything else.


Cancel

The 'Cancel' button closes the dialog box and exits the program without making any changes. Selecting 'Close' from the control menu or double clicking on the control menu box will have the same effect.


Colors

The buttons in the 'Colors' box let you choose the number of colors that will be available to Windows 3.1 after the installation is complete.

The current selections in the 'Resolution' and 'Operating System' boxes will
change the available color choices.

1280x1024 - 16 color is only available in interlaced mode. If you need to run 1280x1024 in noninterlaced mode, select 256 colors.


FONT
Font Size

The two choices in the font size box let you select the size of fonts that Windows 3.1 uses for dialog boxes and menus.

The small fonts are intended for lower resolutions and higher resolutions on large monitors. With smaller monitors, the large fonts are more readable at the higher resolutions.


Help

You already know how to use the 'Help' button since you are reading this.


OK

The 'OK' button closes the dialog box and accepts the choices that you have made.

After clicking 'OK',  your computer will be reconfigured to use the choices that you have made.

These changes may need to be added to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file for them to be permanent. If this is necessary, you will be prompted by the program.

Windows must be restarted before the changes will take effect.


OS
Operating System

The 'Operating System' buttons let you set the operating system that you are running Windows in.

This is very important because the configuration and capabilities of the drivers are very different in OS/2 2.1 and DOS. The most obvious difference is that the drivers will only work in 16 and 256 color modes in OS/2. There are a number of other differences in the configuration of the drivers.

Prior to installing OS/2 For Windows, you will need to run WinMode and select the OS/2 2.1 option.


REFRESH
Monitor Refresh Rates

The drop down list boxes let you select the monitor refresh rates for each resolution. If you select 'Unavailable' for any screen resolution, any higher resolutions will also be tagged as unavailable. This will also turn off the corresponding choices in the 'Resolution' box.

In general, the higher the refresh rate, the better the display quality and the worse the performance. This is because the graphics system can only do so many operations per second. The more operations that it spends drawing the screen, the fewer it has left to do work.

Consult the manual that came with your monitor to determine the proper settings for these fields.

With some combinations of settings in the 'Resolution' and 'Colors' boxes, certain refreshes are not available.


Resolution

The buttons in the 'Resolution' box let you choose the resolution that WinMode will use to run Windows 3.1 after the installation is complete.

The current selections in the 'Monitor Refresh Rates' box will change the available color choices.

1280x1024 - 16 color is only available in interlaced mode. If you need to run 1280x1024 in noninterlaced mode, select 256 colors.