Viper PCI/Viper VLB Win95 Preliminary Drivers Release Notes - 3 May, 1995 Updates: 5 Apr 95 - Initial pre-release 6 Apr 95 - Fixed palette bugaboo w/ dos boxes in Viper.VxD 11 Apr 95 - Fixed problem w/ 'Shutdown to MSDOS mode' 12 Apr 95 - Fixed a DIB problem (improved AVI performance) 13 Apr 95 - Found the b440 DOS window problem in the VXD. 19 Apr 95 - Fixed problem w/ Visual Basic forms in all color depths also removed 2 invalid modes from viper.inf 21 Apr 95 - Fixed Shutdown/DOS hang problems (?) 25 Apr 95 - Fixed minor palette init problem that caused color shifts with "Desert" and like schemes when changing resolutions. 3 May 95 - Fixed Viper.INF to prevent spurious filenotfound err Expand Viper.zip into a empty scratch directory (like C:\VIPER\WIN95) DO NOT expand these either into your Windows System directory or into a directory containing the Win3.1 drivers! Before installation, reset Win95 to the 'standard VGA driver', reboot, then install using Win95 Display Properties / Settings / Change Driver /Have Disk... You still need a VIPER.INI file (created by VPRMODE) stored in c:\viper or another path pointed to by SET VIPERPATH= Note: You may need to edit WIN.INI, and remove the [DrawDib] section to allow Video for Windows to retest the new driver and optimize itself. This hopefully will be done automatically in a later version... This is only needed for a upgrade from a version before 11 April to a more current one! (See 'Known Problems' at end...) These drivers support 256 colors, 32768 colors, and 16777216 colors. These drivers support 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x900, and 1280x1024 256 32k 16M ==================== 640x480 1MB 1MB 2MB 800x600 1MB 1MB 2MB 1024x768 1MB 2MB -na- 1152x900 2MB -na- -na- 1280x1024 2MB -na- -na- This is a very unofficial release! These drivers have not yet receieved thorough application testing. They _have_ been 'smoke tested' w/ the DCT. Test Matrix: (these tests were all done w/ the 5Apr version, later versions are just being tested on PCI versions, unless another VLB specific problem crops up)... board/mem/version Bios tested 256 32k 16M =========================================================== Viper PCI 2MB A7 3.10 x x x Viper PCI 2MB B2 3.09 x x x Viper VLB 2MB E4 3.13 x x x Viper VLB 2MB D3 2.04 x x x Viper VLB 2MB A7 1.12 x x x Known Problems: * At 16bpp (32k colors) or 32bpp (16M colors), stretched .AVI files are rather slow (many frames dropped). Also, at 32k and 16M colors, AVI files in "MS Video One" format perform poorly. * Color/Animated cursors are NOT supported. Sorry! * These drivers have not undergone much application compatibility testing yet. * Bitblt performance is only optimized for 256 color modes. * DO NOT TRY TO RUN THE OLD DIAMOND VIPER CONTROL PANEL! IT WILL GPF! it will be automatically removed by the installation once I figure out how to get the .INF file to do this... * Do not try to use the DPMI Diamond power management application either, it won't work right. * 32k color color mode has some drawing problems (noteably, the copying files status display has a magenta background...) * 'BitEdit' (a unsupported tool from the MSDN Library) causes stack faults at 16 and 32bpp pasting large bitmaps. This seems to be a problem in BitEdit, it is calling the driver with no stack space left. It appears that BitEdit causes USER to recursively call itself numerous times, consuming nearly all the available stack, until a DeviceBitmapBit driver call crashes in the prolog. * I'm hearing that some systems are not shutting down correctly. Ditto, some system have problems w/ DOS jobs... I'm still trying to determine whats going on here. This may be fixed in the 21 April version. Then again, it may not. 2 out of 3 systems are working fine. I can't seem to get my hands on a system that exhibits these problems! Contacting DIAMOND ------------------ Diamond can be reached through a number of ways: Postal Service : Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. 2880 Junction Avenue San Jose, CA 95134 Voice (Main) : (408) 325-7000 Voice (TechSppt): (408) 325-7100 [M-F 6-7; Sat 8-4 Pacific] [plus 24hr automated help] FAX (Main) : (408) 325-7070 FAX (Support) : (408) 325-7171 BBS (to 2400) : (408) 325-7080 BBS (9600+) : (408) 325-7175 CompuServe : GO DMNDONLINE America Online : GO DIAMOND All product names listed are trademarks or copyrights of their respective owners. ===================================================================== Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. (c) 1993-95 (408) 325-7000 All Rights Reserved ===================================================================== $Id: readme.tx@ 05/03/95 16:45:00 MDEXTER Exp $ ====================================================================