Thunder/24 for Windows EISA notes Driver software for the Thunder/24 EISA card for Windows 3.1. All files located in this directory are compressed into a self extracting archive using the PKZIP file compression software. No software is required to de-compress these files. After your files have been downloaded, simply use the following command to extract the files: THUNEISA -D Example: THUNEISA - D A: The example above will place the unziped files on to your A: drive.The "-d" option will extract the original directory hierarchy on to the designated drive. Filename Size Date Description of File Contents ============ ======== ======== ============================================ THUNEISA.EXE 307569 07-01-94| Thunder/24 EISA Disk Version 7/1/94 | This is the entire Thunder/24 EISA installation | disk. ============================================================================== Windows 95 Note The Thunder/24 EISA board will not be updated beyond this driver version, nor will it be supported under Windows 95. Windows 95 expects a user-accessible base MMIO address, and since the Thunder/24 EISA board pre-dates these requirements by several years and offers no MMIO interface, it will not be possible to retrofit or upgrade it to run under Windows 95. ============================================================================== A Windows NT 3.5 compatible driver for the Thunder/24 EISA card is also available. ============================================================================== Technical Support For technical support for this product, you may call Radius Technical Support at: 1-408-541-5700. For priority access to technical support for assistance with this product, please call Radius Technical Support at: 1-900-555-6275, or 1-800-573-6275. Also virtually all of the information about this product, including compatibility and common questions and answers can be found, free of charge, on our technical faxback system at (800) 332-9225. SuperMATCH Thunder/24 EISA Release Notes 29 March 1994 Revised ReadMe 3/22/96 These release notes contain the latest information about operating your new Thunder/24 for Microsoft Windows graphics display card and software. -------- Release Notes --------- 1. Requirements The Thunder/24 drivers require a 80386 based CPU or better, and are fully supported only in Windows 386 Enhanced mode. 2. Unnamed floppy prompt If you attempt to install the Thunder/24 software from your B: floppy, you will see the prompt "Please insert the .", due to a bug in the Windows SETUP program. Type "B:\" (or the name of the disk drive holding the Thunder/24 install disk), then click OK. 3. Third-party "shell" programs If you are using a third-party shell program, such as the Norton Desktop for Windows, and you experience problems while installing Thunder/24 software, refer to the detailed section later in this file. 4. Applications with difficulties at 24 bits - The Windows Program Manager will cause errors if you attempt to add applications to a large group. See the detailed section later in this file. - The Microsoft Visual C++ setup program attempts to create a large group and will issue two errors. See the detailed section later in this file. - The "Aquatic Realm" and "Swan Lake" screen saver modules in After Dark 2.0 display strange bitmaps on devices with 24 bits of color depth. Release 2.0a of After Dark solves this problem. Contact Berkeley Systems Technical Support at 1-800-877-5535 for this upgrade. 5. Compaq Prosignia with motherboard SCSI If you intend to install your Thunder/24 in a Compaq Prosignia system using a SCSI disk and the on-board SCSI controller, you need to take an additional step after installing your Thunder/24 but before actually using the board. Refer to the detailed section later in this file. ========================== -------- Details --------- ========================== This file contains notes and information relating to the Windows driver installation and usage which might not have made it into the release documentation. 1. Restrictions --------------- The Thunder/24 drivers require an 80386 CPU or better, and are fully supported only in Windows 3.1 386 Enhanced mode. Our experience has shown that the driver operates correctly in Windows Standard mode only if an extended memory manager (such as EMM386 or QEMM) is NOT used. Thunder/24 will not operate at all in Windows 3.0 Real mode, and neither should you. Ordinarily, this does not present a problem. Most 386 users use Enhanced mode. However, when you perform an initial Windows installation, you must select a VGA device as your initial graphics adapter when performing an initial Windows installation. Then, once Windows has been installed, you may use the Thunder/24 Setup utility to change to the Thunder/24 adapter. 2. Windows 3.0 -------------- SuperMac does not support operation of the Thunder/24 EISA card and driver under Windows 3.0. 3. Installation Notes --------------------- . Unnamed floppy prompt Because of a bug in the Windows SETUP utility, if you are installing Thunder/24 from your B: floppy, you might be prompted with the particularly unfriendly message "Please insert the ." If you receive this prompt, type in "B:\", or the path to the floppy disk drive holding the Thunder/24 install disk if you are using a different drive. . Third-party "Shell" Programs The Thunder/24 installation and setup program communicates with the Windows Program Manager to install the Thunder/24 group and program icons. Some third-party shells, such as Norton's Desktop for Windows, do not fully comply with the Program Manager DDE interface, and will produce a system error during the Thunder/24 installation. To work around this problem, either change the SHELL line in your SYSTEM.INI file to read "SHELL=PROGMAN.EXE" and restart Windows, or launch PROGMAN.EXE from your preferred shell. Then, restart the Thunder/24 installation. 4. Applications with difficulty at 24 bits per pixel ---------------------------------------------------- Some applications have difficulty operating on a true-color device with 24 bits per pixel. Here are some of the applications which are known to have difficulty. . Program Manager All of the bitmaps for all of the icons within a Program Manager group must fit within a single 64K segment. Because of this, at 24 bits per pixel a single group can hold at most 19 icons. Attempting to add the 20th icon to a group results in a message box indicating "Insufficient Memory to complete the operation." The only solution to this is to split the group into two smaller groups. . Microsoft Visual C++ As one of the last steps in its setup process, Microsoft Visual C++ creates a program group with 22 icons. Because of the Program Manager limitation described above, the addition of last two icons will generate errors. Microsoft is aware of this problem and will be issuing a corrective update. In the interim, one solution is to create another group by hand called "Visual C++ Doc", then move (using drag-and-drop) all the documentation related icons to this new group. Then you may add the two icons which fail: MFCNOTES.HLP and MFCSAMP.HLP, both in the MSVC\HELP . Berkeley Systems After Dark 2.0 The "Aquatic Realm" and "Swan Lake" screen saver modules in After Dark 2.0 display very strange bitmaps on devices with 24 bits of color depth. Release 2.0a of After Dark solves this problem. Contact Berkeley Systems Technical Support at 1-800-877-5535 for this upgrade. 5. Usage of I/O Ports ---------------------- In some cases, in can be useful to know exactly which I/O ports are required by your peripheral devices. This can be especially useful for isolating unusual conflicts. The Thunder/24 EISA card uses the 32 I/O ports in the range zC80 through zC9F, where "z" is the number of the EISA slot where the Thunder/24 resides. For example, if your Thunder/24 EISA is installed in slot 4, the card needs I/O ports 4C80, 4C81, 4C82, and so on through 4C9F. Because ALL of our I/O ports exist in the EISA I/O space for our particular slot, if none of your other cards violate the EISA specification in this regard, there should be no possibility of an I/O port conflict. Thunder/24 EISA requires no IRQs nor DMA lines. 6. Compaq Prosignia with motherboard SCSI ------------------------------------------ There is a bug in the ROM BIOS for the on-board SCSI controller on all Compaq Prosignia systems. This bug results in the upper half of one of the 80486 32-bit registers (EAX) getting lost during a SCSI hardware interrupt, which can occur at any time. This bug manifests itself as a General Protection Fault in SPECBUS.DRV when the mouse is being moved while the screen is refreshing at the same time disk activity is going on. Compaq is currently working on update to their ROM BIOS, and has a corrective patch disk available through their technical support. Until you receive that update, you can use the "CPQSCSI.COM" program which is installed in the system\supermac subdirectory of your Windows directory by the Thunder/24 installation program. You need to a line invoking CPQSCSI in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. You must inform CPQSCSI of the IRQ number that your SCSI controller is using; you can find out the IRQ number by running your EBUS configuration utility. The default IRQ is 15; if this is the case for you, a line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT reading: c:\windows\system\supermac\cpqscsi 15 This program takes up only a few bytes of memory, and saves and restores all of the 32-bit registers around each SCSI hardware interrupt. If you need assistance with this procedure, contact SuperMatch technical support. 7. NEC EISA Systems Some revisions of NEC motherboards and CPU boards incorrectly limit the bus address space to the lower 64 megabytes. This is in violation of the EISA specification, and prevents installation of the Spectrum/24, since all our possible addresses are above 64MB. NEC is aware of the problem; their more recent motherboards and CPU boards extend the address range to 256MB. This does not solve the general case, but it does permit installation of Spectrum/24 at 0F00,0000 (240MB). If you are experiencing problems with an NEC EISA system, you will need to contact their National Service Response Center at 1-800-388-8888. Press 3 once the message starts. You will need to inform them of your date of purchase, serial number, and model number of the unit experiencing trouble. You will need to replace both your motherboard and CPU board with A73 Enhanced parts. The following are the earliest versions which allow 256MB addressing, although later revisions may be in place at this time: Rev # Part Number Motherboard: D7B 158-053306-003 CPU Board: C8A 136-263293-501A The BIOS version should be 1.00.40 or later, and the System Configuration Utility (SCU) should be 3.03.01 or later. NEC has informed us that these modifications will be handled as a warranty repair even if your warranty has expired. If the service personnel at NEC's National Service Responce Center require the name of a technician, refer them to Jim Galvin at 508-635-4755.