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CONFIG.DOC
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1992-04-05
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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
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 no info on certain
modes.
The current VPIC config file VGA chips and the VGA chip manufacturers are:
VGA Chip Manufacturer/version Comments
=================================================================
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+.
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.
REALTEK Realtek Used in RTVGA boards.
S3 S3 GUI Accelerator Used on Orchid Fahr 1280, Diamond Stealth
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.
ZYMOS Zymos Poach 51 True Tech HiRes and others.
VESA VESA Standard For boards which have VESA in BIOS.
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).
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.
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 G P 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 (32,000 colors)
3 => 16 bits/pixel (64,000 colors)
4 => 24 bits/pixel (16,000,000 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.
* 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
* 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 and 1024x768x16 uses 1 plane and 2 pixels/byte.
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.