TECHNICAL SUPPORT MANUAL SUNSHOW IMAGE TOOLKIT and SUNSHOW PROFESSIONAL IMAGE TOOLKIT VIDEO SUPPORT, July, 17, 1992 Video Cards Supported: NOTE: Special video situations may only be supported in the SunShow Professional package, as noted below). In all cases, Sun Country recommends support of recognized standards (video modes, manufacturers, file formats, etc.). Programmers run extra risks when they intend non-standard formats, etc. 1. No SunShow External Drivers Required for the following IBM-compatible video modes. All SunShow Image Toolkit and Professional Toolkit routines operate correctly on IBM-compatible standard PC video cards. *IBM Compatible CGA (support all graphic modes, but mode 6 recommended for graphics) *IBM Compatible EGA (Note: Very OLD IBM EGA w/ 64K (128K is normal) video memory have known limitations - Cannot support 640x350x4 NOTE: 320x200x16 and 640x200x16 ARE supported on these obsolete EGA video cards by SunShow) NOTE: Hardware limitations on certain EGA cards: PALETTE cannot be grabbed on all true EGA cards (not cards having EGA emulation modes), therefore TSR screen capture of palette will be incorrect. In SunShow's libraries for Clipper, any function that needs to grab the screen may not grab palette correctly for this same reason. *IBM Compatible VGA: No known or reported problems. Note: The MDA video card does NOT support graphics, therefore, cannot be used with images. The MCGA for the PS/2 only supports 320x200x4, 320x200x256, 640x200x2, and 640x480x2 graphics modes and outputs RGB analog video signals not TTL. The Hercules Monochrome Graphics Adapter supports 720x348x2. 2. External Drivers Required: Beyond VGA Mode 19 & Hercules Mono VIDEO DETECTION SUNSHOW Image Converter SuperVGA Video Drivers Sun Country Software Products currently support more than 50 video display adapters having graphic and text resolution capabilities beyond generic IBM compatible VGA. These extended graphic and text video modes are commonly referred to as SuperVGA. The installation utility, SETUPDRV.EXE has a list of currently supported Video Board Manufacturers' Super or Extended VGA boards with 256K, 512K, or 1Meg onboard video ram on its main menu. Please note that for full SVGA support, 1 Meg onboard video ram is required for access to all SVGA video modes, especially 1024 x 768 x 256 and beyond. Special notes contained within HDILOAD.DOC apply to 8514/A and IBM XGA graphics adapters. FIRST TIME INSTALLATION WITH INSTALL.EXE from Distribution Disk When installing SUNSHOW Image Toolkit from the distribution diskette with INSTALL.EXE, the video driver installation utility, SETUPDRV.EXE, is automatically invoked as a part of the installation. INSTALL.EXE is menu-driven and is by far the easiest, most convenient method to use to correctly install the Image Toolkit. You must manually select and type in the appropriate number of the video card in the PC from the list, then press <>. Both the extended mode video driver and the extended mode font driver will be installed for you. AUTODETECTION of SVGA CHIPSETS A video chipset autodetection routine has been implemented in the current release of SETUPDRV.EXE that will attempt to make an identification of the chipset used in the video card. The possible chipset detected will be displayed above the list of currently supported SVGA cards on the main menu. No SVGA detection scheme is totally reliable at this time, since many manufacturers do not provide a positive method of identifying their boards. For this reason, the autodetection routine will only suggest what it thinks is the correct chipset, the user is still required to type in the number for the video card manually. We strongly encourage you to verify the video card manufacturer, manufacturer of the chipset used, and the amount of video memory actually on the board. There is also no known method for detecting the amount of video memory installed on any brand of SVGA card. MANUAL RE-INSTALLATION with SETUPDRV.EXE SUNSHOW'S SETUPDRV.EXE will make installation convenient & easy from a menu-driven prompt. You must have all of the decompressed DRIVERS and the installation program, SETUPDRV.EXE in the working directory. Simply invoke SETUPDRV from the DOS prompt and a menu will appear. Select the appropriate brand of video card from the numbered list, type in the number and press ENTER. Both the extended mode video driver and the extended mode font driver will be installed. MANUAL INSTALLATION: Current Drivers must be copied to the file names that SUNSHOW utilities and display modules require. There are TWO drivers necessary. The VIDEO DRIVER must be named: SUNVIDEO.DRV. The FONT DRIVER must be named: SUNFONTS.DRV. Please note that <169>fonts<170> in the driver name is plural. Rather than renaming the driver files included on the distribution diskette, it is a better practice to copy it to this new file name and retain the original. TROUBLE SHOOTING VIDEO PROBLEMS COMMON ERROR MESSAGES: Even though the SUNSHOW Image Toolkit has a reputation for being easy to use and trouble-free, occasionally you may experience difficulties. This error list reference is provided to assist you in diagnosis of many possible problems and their solutions. If you are using a DOS shell such as Windows, XTREE, 1DIRPLUS, or DesqView, you may want to leave the shell and return to DOS. SUNSHOW Image Toolkit routines are well behaved, but, any co-existing shell or TSR usage runs the risks of excessive memory allocation or internal contention that could lock up the PC. SUNSHOW routines do direct screen writes which may cause contention with ill-behaved TSRs. When SUNSHOW routines give you error messages relating to OUT OF MEMORY or inability to allocate memory for buffers, the shell or terminate-and-stay-resident utilities are hogging precious RAM and preventing from correct operation. Well-known ill-behaved TSRs like SIDEKICK are definitely at risk for crashing when attempting to co-exist with database applications. Microsoft WINDOWS 2.11 or older will NOT work with SUNSHOW Image Toolkit routines. All versions of DESQview, including DV/X are known to not correctly restore or refresh SuperVGA graphic mode screens upon returning to a graphic process (after swapping to another process). This is a DESQview problem and occurs even with DESQview-specific or DESQview-aware programs running in SVGA graphics modes. Unless your graphic mode application can refresh its own graphics screen, there is no currently known solution. The graphic mode process works correctly except for this problem and only when swapped out. It does not crash. Quarterdeck Systems is working on this problem. ERROR: CANNOT FIND GRAPHIC MODE FOR THIS IMAGE A. SUNSHOW video drivers for the correct video card MUST be installed to operate the program correctly. For convenience, use SETUPDRV.EXE to install the drivers from a menu-driven utility. B. Video card may not have enough video RAM. Most of the useful SVGA video modes require at least 512K video RAM. C. You may have scanned or video captured an image larger than screen dimensions for the currently installed video card. SUNSHOW display routines, named, "SHOWxxx.EXE, are "REAL MODE" display that require that the image must fit within the screen dimensions of a supported video mode. Either adjust the screen width and height to smaller screen dimensions by scaling the image to smaller dimensions with one of the scaling functions or use the "VIRTUAL MODE" display modules in the SUNSHOW PROFESSIONAL Image Toolkit. It usually is better to prepare images so that they are displayed REAL MODE since this is faster, better suited to commercial imaging applications, and uses less PC resources. Shold you require VIRTUAL display where images are larger than screen dimensions, use the SUNSHOW display modules, named "VIEWxxx.EXE. With virtual display, any mode having the correct number of colors or greater can display any size image. The image will load through the EMS page frame into LIM 4.0 expanded memory into a virtual size, and you can zoom, scroll, and pan a displayable viewport onto the virtual image. IMAGE DIAGNOSTICS to SOLVE VIDEO PROBLEMS A helpful diagnosis utility is included with SUNSHOW Image Toolkit. It's called INFO.EXE and will return useful diagnostic information about the image that you are having difficulty with. To use it, type: INFO FILENAME.EXT and it will display useful information about the image, such as: SCREEN WIDTH SCREEN HEIGHT IMAGE WIDTH IMAGE HEIGHT NUMBER OF COLORS ERROR: CANNOT ALLOCATE MEMORY FOR LINE BUFFERS The most common reason for this error message is that terminate-and-stay-resident utilities or a DOS shell has taken some of the memory that our routines also need. You must unload any such memory stealing utilities for SUNSHOW to work properly. FoxPRO may need to be told to not hog all the memory. The Clipper database kernal libraries have a large memory requirement. You application may need to be swapped out to complete the function returning the above error message. TROUBLE SHOOTING: SPECIFIC ADVICE TO TECHNICAL SUPPORT You are advised to FIRST check video card manufacturer's documentation for valid video modes, amount of video memory, and chipset used. In some cases, it may be necessary to remove cover from PC and physically look at the chipset used and the amount of memory chips. The best way to describe the situation for those users not having technical knowledge is to describe the chipset in the following manner: 1. Look for a large, SQUARE VLSI chip which may be surface mounted, and will be the largest chip on the board, and usually centrally located. Read the manufacturer's name, trademark, and possibly the chip number. 2. There will be rows or columns of small, rectangular identical chips on the video card. There will be four or eight usually. 3. Count the small rectangular chips, we need to know the quantity of these chips. Do not confuse these chips with the 28-pin BIOS chips. Usually the video memory chips are DRAMs or VRAMs. They may also be ZIP modules (8514/A, etc.) or possibly SIMMS (Herc. Graphic Station, etc.) FOUR CHIPS - 256K of video memory or 512K of video memory Read the chips for size. Size is printed on chips. Multiply the number of chips by memory amount on single chip. Single memory chips can be 256x1 or 256x4 EIGHT CHIPS - Usually 1 Meg. video memory. 256x1, 256x4, 1x1 times chips. Could also be 2 Meg (NCR, etc.). IF SVGA card has the following onboard RAM, you may expect (usually) the following resolutions, except as noted below (manufacturer's specifications always take precedence): 256K onboard Video RAM - 640x400x256 - 800x600x16 512K onboard Video RAM - 800x600x256 - 1024x768x16 1 Meg onboard Video RAM - 1024x768x256, some, with BIOS extensions can support 1280x1024x16/1024x1024x256, etc. Usually, there will be a 16 color mode available that is one resolution higher than the highest valid 256 color mode. Some cards also support 640x350x256 (ET-4000, etc. but we do not recommend use of this mode). PARADISE Note: Western Digital has chosen to NOT support 800x600x256, therefore any board having a Paradise or WDC chipset will not have this mode, even though it has 512K video RAM. Some early Paradise & WDC also does not support 1024x768x16 (including Compact, Dell, AST, etc.) Certain releases of early WDC chipsets do not support all modes. IBM also has chosen to not support 800x600x256 in most cases. SVGA MODES to Recommend to commercial customers: 640x400x256 (not supported by all manufacturers) **640x480x256 includes all 16-color modes, has 1:1 pixel aspect ratio **800x600x256 includes all 16-color modes, has 1:1 pixel aspect ratio **1024x768x256 includes all 16-color modes, has 1:1 pixel aspect ratio ** highly recommended for commercial applications. MONITORS: 800x600 at higher require analog, multisync/or analog fixed frequency Monitors that support the desired video modes. Incorrect display, rolling of picture, jumbled image, distortion and severe monitor damage may result from over-driving monitor. Even though monitor may appear to support the desired modes, some video cards can easily over drive inexpensive monitors, even those claiming to support the desired modes, because they are high performance and require greater bandwidth than monitor can support (C&T 453 chipsets, etc) Some SVGA cards have dip-switches or jumpers to "throttle back" or reduce the bandwidth to fit capabilities of inexpensive monitors. This is a different parameter than the 8-bit/16-bit mode of operation jumpers. AST - (Paradise chipset, see Paradise notes, above) ATI Wonder (ATI chipset) ATI VGA Wonder (ATI chipset) No ATI High Color support ATI Elite (Trident chipset) CEG (see Edsun) CHIPS & TECHNOLOGY 453 Chipset 1Mg, 512K 1024x768 CHIPS & TECHNOLOGY 452 Chipset, 512K, 640x480/800x600 Even though 452 has 512K, it only supports 640x480x256 CIRRUS LOGIC COMPAQ, 512K, 256K (using Paradise chipset) DEFINICON ET-4000, 1Mg, 512K, 256K DELL (using Paradise chipset) Older DELL (using WDC chipset) Newer, 1024x768x 256, 800x600x256!! DIAMOND SpeedStar ET-4000, 1 Meg, 512K, 256K EDSUN Laboratories CEG/DAC Continuous Edge Graphics In conjunction with 1 Meg SVGA TSENG ET-4000, C&T 452/453, TRIDENT 8900, PARADISE 1024, etc Chipsets. Supported, but is special case - Requires utilities in Professional to create, display, convert, etc (no .BINs or .LIB functions yet) EVEREX (Everex chipset) 512K video RAM FORTUNER (Trident 8800) 512K video RAM GENOA (Genoa chipset) 512K memory, Requires Sigma driver NOT generic Tseng ET-3000 GENOA - 1 Meg (not supported unless it has ET-4000 installed) GRABERT Autopack Apogee ET-4000, 1Mg, 512K, CEG and SVGA GROUNDHOG Graphics SHADOW, ET-4000, 1Mg, 512K, 256K HEADLANDS Technology (see VIDEO Seven up to 512K only) HERCULES Monochrome Graphics, 720x348x2 IBM XGA 1024x768x256, 640x480x256 (16 color modes supported but XGA requires 1 Meg video memory to display 1024x768 AND 640x480!! (SunShow Professional only) IBM 8514/A Genuine IBM 8514/A only (SunShow Professional only) IMTEC (Trident 8800) 512K video RAM JATON (Trident 8800) 512K video RAM LOGIX (Trident 8800) 512K video RAM MAXXON )Trident 8800) 512K video RAM MILLENIUM Spectrum ET-4000, 1Mg video RAM, BIOS extensions to 1280x1024x16 MONOLITHIC Systems UltraVGA 452 - 512K, 640x480 CEG and SVGA MONOLITHIC Systems UltraVGA 453 - 1 Meg, 1024x768 CEG and SVGA NCR 77C22 Chipset 4 Meg, 2 Meg, 1 Meg, 1024x768x256 NOTE: BIOS extension to 1280x1024 is claimed by manufacturer but not implemented at this date) OAK TECHNOLOGY Chipset 512K video RAM ORCHID ProDesigner, Tseng ET-3000, 512K, 256K ORCHID ProDesigner II, Tseng ET-4000, 1Mg, 512K, 256K PARADISE, 512K, 256K 800x600x16, 640x480x256 (see Paradise note above) PRISM X-VGA 1 Meg, Tseng ET-4000, BIOS extensions to 1280x1024x16 SIGMA, Tseng ET-3000, 512K video RAM, Requires Sigma driver NOT generic Tseng ET-3000 SIGMA Legend, Tseng ET-4000, 1 Meg, 512K, 256K SMART VGA (Trident 8800) 512K video RAM SpeedStar (see DIAMOND) Tseng ET-4000 Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K 1024x768x256 SpeedStar Plus (see DIAMOND) Tseng ET-4000 Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K (short card) 1024x768x256 STB, Tseng ET-3000, 512K, 256K, Requires STB driver NOT generic Tseng ET-3000 STB, Tseng ET-4000, 1Mg, 512K, 256K 1024x768x256 Requires STB4 driver NOT generic Tseng ET-4000 TECMAR 512K video RAM TRIDENT IMPACT 8900 Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K TRIDENT TVGA 8900 (8916-8) Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K TRIDENT generic 8900 Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K TRIDENT generic 8800 Chipset, 512K, 256K TSENG LABS generic ET-3000 Chipset, 512K, 256K TSENG LABS generic ET-4000 Chipset, 1Mg, 512K, 256K VEGA (see VIDEO Seven, older cards may not include complete video modes) VESA Compatible SVGA Cards, 1Mg, 512K, 256K, See Vesa Note: (Older cards may require TSR, Newer cards are BIOS compatible, Some manufacturers may not have all modes implemented, may be slower than board specific driver. Also, VESA standard does support up to 1280x1024x256, as does Sun Country driver) 640x400x256 640x480x256 800x600x16 and 800x600x256 1024x768x16 and 1024x768x256 1280x1024x16 and 1280x768x256 Note: VESA High Color modes are not supported by Sun Country) VGA TWEAK MODES Non-standard modes using Sun Country drivers: Does not require SVGA, will work with an IBM compatible standard VGA: 320x400x256 & 360x480x256, 720x540x16, 800x600x16 (800x600 requires multisync analog monitor) VIEWPOINT by Everex (non-standard Trident 8800)512K video RAM VIEWSONIC PerfectView ET-4000, 1 Meg. 1024x768 VIDEO SEVEN Chipset, 512K, 256K WESTERN DIGITAL Paradise Chipset, 1Mg, 512K XEDAC ET-4000, 1Mg video RAM, CEG and SVGA to 1024x768 XGA, IBM ZYMOS 512K video RAM 3. Not currently supported: SIERRA High Color (32,768 palette 16-bit) 8514A with video pass-through to Vesa connector (where 2 boards are installed - separate non-IBM 8514 and regular SVGA using ribbon cable to Vesa pass-through connector on SVGA card) Texas Instruments 34010/34020/34040 HERCULES Graphic Station S3 Graphic Accelerator chipset Weitek W5086 Graphic Controller Other Graphic Accelerators or Coprocessors