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Technical Support Department Technical Note No. 055 - Tips for using ATI Windows 3.0 Drivers _______________________________________________________________ March 19, 1991 INTRODUCTION This document contains tips about installing and using the high resolution Windows 3.0 drivers for the VGAWONDER. It covers the most commonly asked questions and explains how to get the most out of the drivers. AVAILABLE DRIVERS This initial release of Windows 3.0 drivers contained an 800x600/16 colour driver, which is supported by all versions of the VGAWONDER & VGA EDGE. It also contained a 1024x768/16 colour planar driver which requires an analogue multisync monitor, 512k video memory and a VGAWONDER V4, V5 or VGAWONDER+. The latter driver is not supported on a VGAWONDER V3. The November 5, 1990 release of Windows 3.0 drivers, contains 2 new drivers and a revised driver. The 640x480/256 colour driver requires a VGA or analogue multisync monitor and a 512k VGAWONDER (any version). The 800x600/256 colour driver requires an analogue multisync monitor and a 512k VGAWONDER (any version). The 1024x768/16 colour driver has been revised to use the larger 8514/A type fonts rather than VGA type fonts. A 1024x768/16 colour packed pixel driver is planned for later in the year. It will be supported on all 512k VGAWONDER's, including the V3. OBTAINING THE DRIVERS Drivers for Windows 3.0 have been included with the utility diskettes provided with each VGAWONDER starting with diskette version 1.07. Updates are available by placing an order through ATI Technical Support (416) 756-0711 or by downloading by modem from the ATI BBS (416) 756-4591 {9600/2400/1200 bps, 8 data, 1 stop bits, no parity}. INSTALLING THE DRIVERS - CREATING THE DISPLAY DRIVER DISKETTE ATI makes use of a facility built into Windows 3.0 for installing third party video drivers. An option in the Windows SETUP program allows the user to select a driver from a Display Driver Disk. There are 3 ways to obtain a Display Driver Disk for the VGAWONDER. i) If you have a set of VGAWONDER utility disks containing Windows 3.0 drivers, run VDRIVER and select Windows 3.0. The VDRIVER program will create a Display Driver Disk on a blank, pre-formatted disk. 1 ii) If you have ordered a Windows 3.0 driver upgrade disk from ATI, it is ready to use as the Display Driver Disk. iii) If you have downloaded the Windows 3.0 drivers from our BBS, the INSTALL.BAT will create the Display Driver Disk on a blank, formatted disk. You will require a copy of the PKUNZIP un-compression program which can also be downloaded from the ATI BBS. FIRST TIME INSTALLATION This section applies to users who have not yet installed Windows on their hard driver or users who wish to reinstall from the diskettes. A Display Driver Disk should be prepared as described above. Windows should be installed as described in the Installing Windows with SETUP section in the Windows User's Guide. A screen will appear asking the user to verify the system configuration. The user should use the cursor keys to move the highlight bar to "Display: VGA" and should then hit the enter key. A window will appear containing a number of display options. The correct option is "Other" (this is usually the last option in the list). The program will then prompt the user to insert the Display Driver Disk). The SETUP program may request this disk (without referring to the name) again later during the installation especially if it is being installed on a 386 system and/or a networked system. FIRST TIME INSTALLATION continued Select an appropriate driver from the list and complete installation. WINDOWS ALREADY INSTALLED This section applies to users who have already installed Windows on their hard drives and do not wish to do a complete reinstall. Many configuration options of Windows can usually be changed with the Setup option in the Windows Main Group. However, ATI recommends that display driver be changed by running the SETUP.EXE program in the Windows directory. Refer to the Running setup from MS-DOS section in the Using Setup to Maintain Windows chapter in the Windows Users Guide. Install drivers as described in paragraph 2 & 3 of FIRST TIME INSTALL. 2 SWAPPING DRIVERS This section applies to users who may wish to change display modes on occasion. Users may wish to use a certain mode for some applications and another mode for other applications. The Windows Setup program allows the user to select an appropriate configuration, copies the required files from the disks (renaming some in the process) and stores the configuration data. The configuration data is stored in special text files with the .INI extension. The SYSTEM.INI file contains all the data which affects the display. The items of importance to the display include the display driver, frame grabber, virtual device driver, system fonts and terminal fonts. ATI recommends that users use SETUP.EXE to create a SYSTEM.INI for each mode the user may wish to use. The SYSTEM.INI must be copied with another name or SETUP.EXE will erase the old version. For example, Windows could be installed for each of the four modes and the resulting SYSTEM.INI files could be copied to a name based on the resolution. In this example they would be named 800_16.INI, 1024_16.INI, 640_256.INI and 800_256.INI. The mode can be swapped simply by copying (NOT renaming) the appropriate file to SYSTEM.INI before running Windows. It is not possible to change video modes while Windows is running. UPDATING DRIVERS ATI may from time to time offer updated Windows drivers for the VGAWONDER. These will be announced through our BBS and can be obtained as described in the section with the OBTAINING DRIVERS heading. Users should be aware that the Windows SETUP will not copy new drivers with the same file name from the Display Driver Disk. Therefore, you must delete the older ATI Windows drivers from your SYSTEM sub-directory before installing the newer drivers. PERFORMANCE Users will notice some difference in performance between the different modes. This is partly due to the different amounts of graphics memory used in each mode and partly due to the internal architecture of the VGA chipset. The 16 colour modes are substantially quicker than 256 colour modes at the same resolution. A 256 colour mode requires twice the video memory of a 16 colour mode at the same resolution. In addition, the 256 colour modes use a different memory architecture which is less efficient than the 16 colour memory architecture. 3 The fastest Super VGA mode is the 800x600 /16 colour (mode 54h) followed by the 1024x768 /16 (mode 55h), the 640x480 /256 colour (mode 62h) and the slowest is the 800x600 /256 colour (mode 63h). Should you require any further information or assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us. HINTS - TROUBLESHOOTING Note that it is up to the user to determine if the selected mode is actually available. If Windows exits to DOS after displaying the blue introduction screen, it is likely that the mode is not available. Use the V-INFO program supplied on your VGAWONDER diskettes to check the amount of display memory and the monitor type. Check the monitor specifications to confirm that the resolution desired is actually supported. Windows requires more than 512K conventional system memory to install. It may be necessary to edit the CONFIG.SYS and/or the AUTOEXEC.BAT to remove some device drivers and resident programs in order to complete the install. If the user continues to have problems after checking the items listed above, ATI recommends a complete new installation from the disks. Be sure to remove all Windows related device drivers from the CONFIG.SYS and reboot before attempting a new installation. These device drivers are: SMARTDRV.SYS, EGA.SYS, HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.SYS and MOUSE.SYS. Users with third party 386 memory managers may experience problems installing Windows in Enhanced mode. The memory manager must be Windows 3.0 compatible. Contact your 386 memory manager vendor for upgrade information if the documentation does not specifically claim compatibility with Windows 3.0. In may cases, Windows will not install with a third party memory manager present even if the memory manager is Windows 3.0 compatible. If so, use HIMEM.SYS instead during Windows installation and then reinstall your memory manager. SCREEN COLOURS The Windows environment is capable of supporting 256 colours but you will find that few current applications will make use of the additional colours when a 256 colour mode is installed. Windows reserves 20 colours for itself and most applications (including Windows Paint and the colour function of Windows Desktop) will only allow the user to manipulate those 20 colours. Some colours are created by mixing or "dithering" pure colours together. The remaining colours (256-20=236) are controlled by the palette manager function within Windows. Only software which makes use of the palette manager will be able to use more than 20 colours. 4 Some of the applications which do implement 256 colours are MS Powerpoint, Publishers Paintbrush for Windows and 256 colour wallpapers can be displayed. RUNNING STANDARD APPLICATIONS Windows has a limited ability to do task switching with non- Windows DOS (or "standard") applications. They can be run in a window or full screen. Running a standard application in a window requires Windows to convert the screen image of that application into a graphical representation in the window. This is often painfully slow and many graphics programs will not work in the window. It is NEVER possible to use a non-IBM video mode (resolution higher than 640x480 /16 colours) program in the window even if the video mode is the same as the Windows video mode. See the following paragraph for further explanation. Running a standard application in full screen mode is much simpler and the vast majority of software will work. It is possible to use any graphics mode in a full screen. However, task switching while using a non-IBM video mode will result in a trashed screen after returning from the Windows desktop. Users should exit these applications before task swapping. The ATI drivers do not support "save and restore" of non-IBM video modes (required for task switching) nor do they support "mode conversion" of non-IBM video modes (required for windowing). Addition of these capabilities would be a massive undertaking which would increase the size of the drivers and increase the memory requirements. NETWORK INSTALLATIONS Users may experience problems when installing high resolution drivers for Windows on a network with the SETUP /N option. This option allows the user to minimize the disk space consumed on individual work stations and allow most Windows files to be shared through the network. You may see an message appear saying !! Error Building WIN.COM !! during installation. This is due to a problem with Windows SETUP where it will try to install the drivers from the Display Driver Disk to the \Windows\System directory. This directory is not created or used in a network installation. The result is installation failure. Microsoft has been made aware of the problem and will correct it in a future revision of Windows. In the meantime, the ATI driver can be manually installed as shown below. 5 MANUAL INSTALLATIONS This section describes how to install the ATI drivers without using Windows SETUP. It is intended for advanced users who are experiencing network installation problems or find the Windows SETUP too tedious. 1) Install Windows for standard VGA. Ensure that Windows is fully functional before proceeding. 2) Copy the *.DRV and the VDDVGA.386 files from the Display Driver Disk into the Windows directory on the workstation's hard drive (not the network drive). 3) Users running the network install should ignore this step. Copy the following file from the Windows diskettes into the Windows directory on your hard drive: V7VGA.GR3 You will need to use the Windows EXPAND command to uncompress the font files from the Windows disk 1. An example of the command is shown below: A:>EXPAND A:8514FIX.FON C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\8514FIX.FON A:>EXPAND A:8514OEM.FON C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\8514OEM.FON A:>EXPAND A:8514SYS.FON C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\8514SYS.FON 4) Use the Windows Notebook program or the ASCII editor of your choice to edit the SYSTEM.INI file in the Windows directory according to the table on the next page : 6 MODE VIDEO CHANGE FROM CHANGE TO real or 800x600/16 [boot] [boot] standard display.drv=vga.drv display=win3-54B.drv 1024x768/16 [boot] [boot] display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-55b.drv fixedfon.fon=vgafix.fon fixedfon.fon=8514fix.fon oemfonts.fon=vgaoem.fon oemfonts.fon=8514oem.fon fonts.fon=vgasys.fon fonts.fon=8514sys.fon 640x480/256 [boot] [boot] display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-62.drv 800x600/256 [boot] [boot] display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-63.drv enhanced 800x600/16 [boot] [boot] display.drv=vga.drv display=win3-54B.drv [386Enh] [386Enh] display=*vgavdd display=vddvga.386 1024x768/16 [boot] [boot] display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-55b.drv fixedfon.fon=vgafix.fon fixedfon.fon=8514fix.fon oemfonts.fon=vgaoem.fon oemfonts.fon=8514oem.fon fonts.fon=vgasys.fon fonts.fon=8514sys.fon [386Enh] [386Enh] display=*vgavdd display=vddvga.386 640x480/256 [boot] [boot] grabber=vga.gr3 grabber=v7vga.gr3 display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-62.drv [386Enh] [386Enh] display=*vgavdd display=vddvga.386 800x600/256 [boot] [boot] grabber=vga.gr3 grabber=v7vga.gr3 display.drv=vga.drv display.drv=win3-63.drv [386Enh] [386Enh] display=*vgavdd display=vddvga.386 7