CONFIGURING VPIC VPIC must be configured to run correctly with your display board. The con- figuration process tells VPIC: 1. The title you want for the menu. 2. What VGA chip you have, so it can use the proper bank switching routine. 3. How much memory you have (in 64K banks). 4. The menu color you want (background:foreground). 5. How to set the various modes you want to use. This method is used instead of trying to autodetect the VGA chip and memory (unless you have a board that supports VESA) because: 1. Some chips are very hard to detect, and memory on board is even harder. 2. As new VGA chips are released, there is a delay before the detection is implemented in the program. 3. The WHICHVGA program is provided to autodetect the VGA chip and memory, but it fails on some chips. 4. The config file provides more user control than automatic means. If you aren't sure which VGA chip your board uses, you can run WHICHVGA, which will try to identify your VGA chip and the amount of memory you have. WHICHVGA now tries to identify your SuperVGA chip and memory three ways; by reading ports, checking for VESA, and reading the first 640 bytes of Video BIOS. The info is saved in a file called WHICHVGA.TXT, which you can read. If this doesn't work, you can try to compare the graphics mode numbers in your manual to the mode numbers in the various configuration files. As a last resort, you can remove the display board and look at the label on the large chip with leads coming out all four sides. If WHICHVGA comes back with VESA, that means that your board supports the VESA standard, which offers a standard interface for VPIC to your SuperVGA display adapter. It defines the SuperVGA extended modes that your card will do, and has a standard interface for setting the mode and bank switching, etc. You may have received a VESA `Terminate and Stay Resident' (TSR) program with your VGA board. If so, you are encouraged to use it, since it more or less guarantees that VPIC will work with your display card. The only disadvantage of VESA is concerned with scrolling the VGA screen, since there is no standard interface for setting the top of screen beyond 16 bits (line 81 at 800x600x256, line 102 at 640x480x256, or line 204 at 320x200x256). This version of VPIC automatically reads the VESA info from your display BIOS, and uses the VESA interface. If you enter VPIC with the /v option, VESA info is ignored and VPIC uses the configuration file info; this is helpful when VESA returns info VPIC isn't expecting or wrong info; the older S3 cards (Orchid Fahrenheit 1280, Diamond Stealth, etc) return wrong VESA info, and need the /v option so they use the configuration file info. A generic VESA.CFG file is supplied for you to play with to try to get your VESA card to work; see below on what each entry means; again, you have to use the /v option to enable this configuration info. The CIRRUS54.CFG config file is an example of how to modify the generic VESA.CFG. If the top line in VPIC says VESA, then VPIC is using VESA info returned by your SVGA card. If the only resolution listed is 320x200, there is probably a problem with your memory manager. To verify this, try booting with from a DOS floppy with no memory manager. I only exclude B000-B7FF (used by Windows) and C000-C7FF (Video ROM), and I found that stealth mode confuses the SVGA VESA routines, so I don't use stealth. On the other hand, the Trident 8900c returns VESA hi-color modes which it cannot do, so you have to lock (Alt F7) it into 256 colors. The current VPIC config file VGA chips and the VGA chip manufacturers are: VGA Chip Manufacturer/version Comments ================================================================= ACUMOS Acumos Voltane, No. 9 GXiTC, others AHEADA Ahead ver A Older Ahead cards. AHEADB Ahead ver B Ahead VGA Wizard/Deluxe. *ATIOLD ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 65h ATI ver 1 chip, VGAWonder. *ATINEW ATI, 1024x768x16 mode 55h ATI ver 2 up chip, VGAWonder+. For the ATI Ultra, be sure to run ATI's HDILOAD program first to activate the 8514A interface for the 1024x768x256 mode. CIRRUS Cirrus CL-GD 500/600 MaxLogic MaxVGA boards NOT SUPPORTED YET. CHIPSTECH Chips & Technology 82C452 Cardinal, Older Boca. EVEREX Original Everex chip EVBIOS Everex 673, etc Has bank switching built into BIOS. GENOA Genoa (Sim ET 3000) 5300/6300 = 256K, others = 512K. HEADLAND Headland HT-208 Used on VGA-1024i. NCR NCR Boca, PVGA 1024i, etc OAK Oak PARADISE Paradise Older Paradise cards. PRIMUS Primus Used in Galaxy 2000 cards. REALTEK Realtek Used in RTVGA boards and ALVGA *S3 S3 GUI Accelerator Used on Orchid Fahr 1280, Diamond Stealth, Genoa Windows VGA, etc. TRI88BR Trident TVGA 8800BR Used on older Trident boards, 128K banks. TRI88CS Trident TVGA 8800CS Used on older Trident boards (Maxxon) TRI89 Trident TVGA 8900 Latest Trident VGA chip, 1M memory avail. TS3000 Tseng ET 3000 Used on early Genoa, Orchid, others. TS4000 Tseng ET 4000 Recent Orchid, STB, other, 1M memory. TS4000HI Tseng ET 4000 HiColor Does 32K colors to 800x600, 1M memory. WD90C Western Digital WD90C00 Recent Paradise cards, same operation. VIDEO7 Video 7 Earlier Video 7 boards, BIOS bank switch. Hewlett Packard SVGA. ZYMOS Zymos Poach 51 True Tech HiRes and others. VESA VESA Standard For boards which have VESA in BIOS. * For ATI boards, certain modes may not be enabled (such as 800x600) unless you choose the proper (or custom) monitor in ATI's INSTALL program. On the older S3 cards, VESA returned the wrong info, so use the /v option. As new chips become available, they will be added to this list. Run WHICHVGA to find your VGA chip (works most of the time), and then run CONFIG and find a CFG file using that VGA chip. Check that the modes agree with the graphics modes in your manual (16 and 256 color modes only); if they match your card exactly, use that CFG file by pressing ENTER. If not, copy the closest file to a new filename with extension CFG and change the modes to agree with your manual. Make the title and menu color whatever you like (see CONFIGURATION FILE FORMAT). Then rerun CONFIG, pick that file, and press ENTER to configure VPIC. There are numerous configuration files which come with VPIC, but there are so many boards out there that I can't list all of them. MENU CONFIGURATION To configure VPIC, make sure that VPIC, CVPIC, CONFIG, and all the .CFG files are in the current directory. By running the CONFIG program, VPIC can be configured from a menu. CONFIG lists all the configuration files (with a .cfg extension) in the current directory, and shows you the contents of each as you move around the list using the cursor keys. ESCape aborts the CONFIG program without changing VPIC, and ENTER configures VPIC for the highlighted file. Pressing a letter key jumps to next filename starting with that letter (or number). The mode descriptions include ax, bx, cx, dx, X, Y, and color fields from the config file; see below. You can try to match these with your manual if you aren't sure which SuperVGA card you have. MANUAL CONFIGURATION You can use CVPIC to configure VPIC manually by entering: CVPIC config_file[.ext] where the default extension is .cfg and config_file is the configuration file you want to use. This is what CONFIG does when you press ENTER from the menu. CONFIGURATION FILE (.CFG) FORMAT CVPIC ignores leading spaces and blank lines in the file, and all characters after a semicolon are considered comments and ignored. The .CFG file contains the following lines, which can be up to 150 characters in length each: 1. Board name, which will appear in the VPIC menu. This is user define- able, and could be something like 'Joe's VGA Board'. 2. VGA CHIP should be one of the names supported by VPIC; see above. Upper or lower case is OK. 3. The number of 64K banks of display ram usable for pictures (1 for standard VGA (no extended modes), 4 for 256K, 8 for 512K, 16 for 1M). 4. Menu text color. A number whose value is background*16 + foreground. The allowable background colors are 0 thru 7, and the allowable foreground colors are 0 thru 15. This number is easiest to figure if entered in hex (prefixed by 0x); then the 1st digit is the background color (0-7) and the 2nd digit is the foreground color (0-F). The digits correspond to black (0), blue (1), green (2), aqua (3), red (4), violet (5), brown (6), and white (7), and the digits 8-F are intensified versions of the 0-7. For example, 0x3E would tell VPIC to use bright yellow text on an aqua background. CONFIG gives the value in hex, and the corresponding foreground-background colors. 5 thru n. The following lines describe the modes supported by the board. Each line is of the form: F1 F2 AX BX CX DX W H C BPL MR G P B where: * F1 = 0 or 1 for normal SuperVGA modes, > 1 for hi-color DAC modes as follows: 0 => 16 color modes 1 => 256 color modes 2 => 15 bits/pixel (32,768 colors) 3 => 16 bits/pixel (65,536 colors) 4 => 24 bits/pixel (16,777,216 colors) * F2 = 0 for EGA (640x350x16) with 64 colors to choose from, and 1 for all others modes (which have 256,000 colors to choose from). * AX,BX,CX,DX register values used to set this mode. Preceding the numbers by 0x indicates hex; ie., 0x10 = 16. Using 8514 for AX indicates an 8514A interface, where BX is the mode. * W, H, C are width, height, colors in this mode. For 24 bit modes the colors field has the color order; 123=>BGR, 321=>RGB. Additional Information if known * BPL is the bytes per scan line for this mode. * MR is the maximum row for this mode; 0 => calculate from banks. * G is the bank granularity in Kbytes; for instance, the Paradise has 4K banks. * P is the number of color planes; usually 1 for 256 color modes and 4 for 16 color modes. However, the ATI in 1024x768x16 and the S3 in 800x600x16 thru 1280x1024x16 uses 1 plane and 2 pixels/byte; this is sensed when colors=16 and planes=1. * B is the number of 64K banks this mode can use; 0 => use banks from 3 above. * WinA, WinB apply only to config files with VESA chip. Generally only WinA is used, but a few boards use both. The modes may be entered in any order, but listing all the VGA (256 color) modes followed by the EGA (16 color) modes, followed by the Sierra DAC modes makes sense, and the mode numbers can be determined by looking at the configuration file. For specifying the mode N from the command line (/mN option for VPIC), the mode numbers increase with increasing resolution and can be found from the menu screen as follows: * The 256 color modes are numbered 1 thru 10 starting at 320x200. * The 16 color modes are numbered 11 thru 20 starting at 640x350. * For hi-color modes use 21, 31, 41 for 15, 16 and 24 bits/pixel. If you are configured with a hi-color DAC, 16-32 bits/pixel pictures will be shown in hi-color if you pick a resolution supported by the board for hi-color. As an example, the Cirrus 54xx boards can show 640x480 in 32K, 64K, or 16.7M colors, and 800x600 in 32K or 64K colors. If you view a 640x480 TIFF 24 file, it will be shown in 16.7 million colors (24 bits/pixel), but you can use Alt F7 from the menu to lock 32K or 64K colors or even 256 colors (using color reduction). Alt F6 lists the graphics modes VPIC thinks you have, either from VESA or the configuration file info.