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1993-03-03
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ROMFNT 1.5 The ROM font loader. Copyright 1993 Tim Godfrey
Before running this program, read the >>CAUTION<< section below!
This program writes new fonts into the VGA BIOS ROM (which must be already
loaded into shadow RAM). If your motherboard doesn't support shadowing the
video BIOS, then you can't use this program. You will have to enable video
BIOS shadowing in your CMOS setup before ROMFNT can work. The new fonts
will be permanent, and will survive mode changes. (and on some machines,
even a warm boot). This program is not a TSR, and doesn't change anything
in the VGA except the font data and ROM Checksum.
I wrote ROMFNT because I don't like the default "double dot" fonts (which
date back to the CGA and TV set monitors, but are still faithfully copied
by every VGA card). I don't like giving up memory to TSRs unless I have to,
either. ROMFNT will load a set of 'thin' fonts as a default if no font
files are supplied. Other fonts in suitable format are supplied with Tseng
Labs based VGA cards, as well as the Personics Ultravision product.
This program currently supports the following motherboard chipsets:
Chips and Technologies NEAT chipsets for the 286 and 386.
Informtech IT386 motherboard with TI 386 chipset.
SIS chipset for 386 (85C310).
ETEQ chipset for 386 (82C491).
OPTI chipset for 486 (82C493).
UMC chipset for 486 (82C481).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> CAUTION!<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
In order for this program to do what it does, it has to set bits in very low
level hardware configuration registers of the motherboard chipsets. There
are no standards for these registers between motherboards. I have written
this program to work with motherboards I have access to and could test on.
If your motherboard is different, there is no way to predict what could
happen. Possible side effects could cause a lockup requiring a cold boot or
power off, and in extreme cases, erasing of the CMOS setup information. Be
sure you know what's in your CMOS setup before using this program for the
first time. This program does _not_ ever intentionally modify the CMOS data,
but strange things can (and do) happen.
Command Line Options: (options can be flagged with a - or a / character)
-? option:
Help Screen
-D option:
Debug mode: status information is output
-L option:
Set lines of text on screen.
-L25 Puts screen in 25 line mode after loading, with new font
-L28 Puts screen in 28 line mode after loading, with new font
-L50 Puts screen in 50 line mode after loading, with new font
Note: If a -L option is not specified, the new fonts won't take
effect until the next video mode change.
Filename.ext
Up to 3 font file names can be supplied on the command line
The three font formats are 8 line, 14 line and 16 line.
These files must be in straight binary format, and must include the
entire 256 character set.
The size of the file determines what kind of font it contains. IE,
(file size / 256) = # lines of font. Font files need to be in the
current directory, ROMFNT's directory, or on the path.
Example: ROMFNT thisfont.fnt thatfont.fnt -L50
-H option:
Some font file formats include a "header" with some extra bytes
at the start of the font. (IE: Tseng labs uses a 8 byte header, so
the parameter would be -H8) the -Hnn parameter, where nn is an
integer, will ignore the first nn bytes of the the font file. The
header size will be taken into account in the file size/font size
computation. (There can be only one -H parameter, so all font
files must be in the same format).
-X option:
ROMFNT has three internal "thin" fonts. Normally, if all 3 font
sizes are not specified as files on the command line, the default
fonts are loaded into the unspecified sizes. If the -X option is
used, the default fonts will not be loaded, and the original fonts
will remain unchanged. Only the file font(s) will be loaded.
-@xxxx :
Chipset specification. ROMFNT is able to detect some chipsets
who's makers managed to include some sort of ID bits. With all the
varieties of motherboards in use, there are many ways the chipset
check could be confused or wrong. It is also possible for just the
process of checking to lock up machines based on other (unknown)
chipsets. This parameter bypasses the software check, and directly
specifies a chipset. Be sure you use the correct one! Note: SIS
and ETEQ chips MUST be selected with the -@ parameter.
Currently supported choices are :
C&T286 C&T386 INF33 SIS ETEQ OPTI UMC
-Z option: ROMFNT normally only works with Chipsets that are internally
supported. If the video bios is shadowed into writable RAM at the
properlocation, IE segment C000, the Z option will bypass Chiset
Checking. Most Shadow RAM implementations have a hardware write
protect that must be deactivated before ROMFNT -Z can work. See the
enclosed program, CHIPSET.PAS which is a prototype of shell program
to do this. You will have to edit the parameters to correspond with
the specifics of your chipset, and then re-compile with Turbo
Pascal (V 4 or later will work). Note: Using the -Z option with
QEMM stealth will probably crash your machine, since the fonts will
overwrite the programs that are loaded high in the VGA rom space.