133 lines
7.7 KiB
Plaintext
133 lines
7.7 KiB
Plaintext
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CONFIGURING VPIC
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VPIC must be configured to run correctly with your display board. The
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configuration process tells VPIC:
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1. The title you want for the menu.
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2. What VGA chip you have, so it can use the proper bank switching routine.
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3. How much memory you have (in 64K banks).
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4. The menu color you want (background:foreground).
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5. How to set the various modes you want to use.
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If you aren't sure which VGA chip your board uses, you can run WHICHVGA, which
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will try to identify your VGA chip and the amount of memory you have. Also check
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VGABOARD.DAT for a list of some of the VGA boards each chip was used on. If this
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doesn't work, you can remove the display board and look at the label on the
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large chip with leads coming out all four sides. Sometimes, you can tell without
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removing the board by using DEBUG (or Turbo Debugger, Codeview, or any debugger)
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and 'dumping' the contents of display BIOS. To do this, enter DEBUG at the DOS
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prompt and you will get a - prompt. Then enter d C000:0 to display the first
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part of display BIOS. To dump more of BIOS, juts enter d. You may recognize the
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chip manufacturers name here, such as ATI, Trident, Tseng, Paradise, etc. To
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exit DEBUG, just enter q.
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If WHICHVGA comes back with VESA, that means that your board supports the VESA
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standard, which offers a standard interface for VPIC to your SuperVGA display
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adapter. It defines the SuperVGA extended modes that your card will do, and has
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a standard interface for setting the mode and bank switching, etc. You may have
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received a VESA `Terminate and Stay Resident' (TSR) program with your VGA board.
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If so, you are encouraged to use it, since it more or less guarantees that VPIC
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will work with your display card. The only disadvantage of VESA is concerned
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with scrolling the VGA screen, since there is no standard interface for setting
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the top of screen beyond 16 bits (line 81 at 800x600x256, line 102 at
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640x480x256, or line 204 at 320x200x256). This version of VPIC automatically
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reads the VESA info from your display BIOS, and uses the VESA interface. If you
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enter VPIC with the /v option, VESA info is ignored and VPIC uses the
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configuration file info.
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The current VPIC config file VGA chip names and the VGA chip manufacturers are:
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VGA Chip Manufacturer/version Comments
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=================================================================
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AHEADA Ahead ver A Older Ahead cards.
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AHEADB Ahead ver B Ahead VGA Wizard/Deluxe.
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ATIOLD ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 65h ATI ver 1 chip, VGAWonder
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ATINEW ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 55h ATI ver 2 up chip, VGAWonder+
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CIRRUS Cirrus CL-GD 500/600 MaxLogic MaxVGA boards NOT SUPPORTED YET
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CHIPSTECH Chips & Technology 82C452 Cardinal, Older Boca
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EVEREX Original Everex chip
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EVBIOS Everex 673, etc Has bank switching built into BIOS
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GENOA Genoa (Sim ET 3000) 5300/6300 = 256K, others = 512K
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HEADLAND Headland HT-208 Used on VGA-1024i
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OAK Oak
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PARADISE Paradise Older Paradise cards
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TRI88BR Trident TVGA 8800BR Used on older Trident boards, 128K banks.
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TRI88CS Trident TVGA 8800CS Used on newer Trident boards (Maxxon, Logix)
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TRI89 Trident TVGA 8900 Latest Trident VGA chip, 1M memory avail.
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TS3000 Tseng ET 3000 Used on early Genoa, Orchid, others
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TS4000 Tseng ET 4000 Recent Orchid, STB, other, 1M memory avail.
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TS4000HI Tseng ET 4000 HiColor Does 32K colors to 800x600, 1M memory avail.
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WD90C Western Digital WD90C00 Recent Paradise cards, same operation.
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VIDEO7 Video 7 Earlier Video 7 boards, BIOS bank switching.
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ZYMOS Zymos Poach 51 True Tech HiRes and others.
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VESA VESA Standard For boards which have VESA in BIOS.
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As new chips become available, they will be added to this list. Run WHICHVGA to
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find your VGA chip (works most of the time), and then run CONFIG and find a CFG
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file using that VGA chip. Check that the modes agree with the graphics modes in
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your manual (16 and 256 color modes only); if they match your card exactly, use
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that CFG file by pressing ENTER. If not, copy the closest file to a new filename
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with extension CFG and change the modes to agree with your manual. Make the
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title and menu color whatever you like (see CONFIGURATION FILE FORMAT). Then
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rerun CONFIG, pick that file, and press ENTER to configure VPIC. There are
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numerous configuration files which come with VPIC, but there are so many boards
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out there that I can't list all of them.
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MENU CONFIGURATION
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To configure VPIC, make sure that VPIC, CVPIC, CONFIG, and all the .CFG files
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are in the current directory. By running the CONFIG program, VPIC can be
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configured from a menu. CONFIG lists all the configuration files (with a .cfg
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extension) in the current directory, and shows you the contents of each as you
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move around the list using the cursor keys. ESCape aborts the CONFIG program
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without changing VPIC, and ENTER configures VPIC for the highlighted file.
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Pressing a letter key jumps to next filename starting with that letter (or
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number).
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MANUAL CONFIGURATION
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You can use CVPIC to configure VPIC manually by entering
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CVPIC config_file[.ext]
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where the default extension is .cfg.
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CONFIGURATION FILE (.CFG) FORMAT
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CVPIC ignores leading spaces and blank lines in the file, and all characters
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after a semicolon are considered comments and ignored. The .CFG file contains
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the following lines, which can be up to 150 characters in length each:
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1. Board name, which will appear in the VPIC menu. This is user defineable,
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and could be something like 'Joe's VGA Board'.
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2. VGA CHIP should be one of the names supported by VPIC; see above. Upper
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or lower case is OK.
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3. The number of 64K banks of display ram usable for pictures (1 for
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standard VGA (no extended modes), 4 for 256K, 8 for 512K, 16 for 1M).
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4. Menu text color. A number whose value is (background*16 + foreground).
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The allowable background colors are 0 thru 7, and the allowable
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foreground colors are 0 thru 15. This number is easiest to figure if
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entered in hex (prefixed by 0x); then the 1st digit is the background
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color (0-7) and the 2nd digit is the foreground color (0-F). The digits
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correspond to black (0), blue (1), green (2), aqua (3), red (4),
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violet (5), brown (6), and white (7), and the digits 8-F are intensified
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versions of the 0-7. For example, 0x3E would tell VPIC to use bright
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yellow text on an aqua background. CONFIG gives the value in hex, and the
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corresponding foreground-background colors.
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5 thru n. The following lines describe the modes supported by the board.
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Each line is of the form: F1 F2 AX BX CX DX W H C G P where:
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* F1 = VGA (256 color) mode flag.
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* F2 = 256K colors to choose from flag (as in mode 12h, 640x480x16 or
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any 256 color mode).
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* AX,BX,CX,DX register values used to set this mode. Preceeding the
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numbers by 0x indicates hex; ie., 0x10 = 16.
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* W, H, C are width, height, colors in this mode.
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VESA.CFG ONLY
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* G is the VESA Granularity in Kilobytes; you only need to specify this
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if WHICHVGA returned VESA and a Granularity of less than 64K for a
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mode; ie, if the Granularity for a mode was 4K, use 4 for this field.
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* P is the number of color planes; usually 1 for 256 color modes and 4
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for 16 color modes. However, the ATI in 1024x768x16 uses 1 plane and
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2 pixels/byte.
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All the VGA (256 color) modes should be grouped first, followed by the EGA
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(16 color) modes.
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