This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (32 messages)
HP Ultra VGA+
Message #37498
Dick, Your new S3 board should have VESA VBE support in the BIOS so you should be able to use AP's VESA drivers. I'd check the index in the manual for your board for VESA and see what it says. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Nik, I don't have any good ideas on this on. If you want to try another driver, Nancy Moss over in product training has copies of our TurboDLD. I know she's been using them without any problems on Compaq systems with QVision boards. BTW, I'll get a copy of our…
#TIGA driver for AA
Message #36943
Nik, We haven't put it on our BBS or made it directly available for support reasons. However, if you have customers who need TIGA support for AAPRO, you can refer them to me and I'll email them a free copy. The only catch is they're on their own with it.…
Nik, Do you have a Compaq DX2-66? I seem to recall a Pharlap problem that's fixed with a patch to the Compaq driver. Let me know if you want me to find that thread. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Hal, We did a TIGA driver for Animator Pro a while back, but it's performance isn't all that spectacular. AP runs best with a fast, memory mapped board and that definitely doesn't describe TIGA. The communications overhead talking to the TIGA board really slows things down. If you're interested in…
Randy, You might want to try disabling the Speedstar's turbo mode. It's not 100% compatible with all motherboards. I think that it's one of the switches right next to the VGA output. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Noah, Panacea wrote the ADI driver which is bundled with Diamond VGA boards and hence with your Gateway sysyem. If you're getting AutoCAD crashes with your Gateway system, then you haven't configured things properly. Most likely, I'd bet that you're using the real mode DLD-VGA driver (found in the \ADI40)…
Michael, Excluding that memory is a great idea, but the SpeedStar doesn't use B000h-B7FFh for 1024×768 resolution. Most VGA software only uses a 64K frame at A000h to write to the VGA. Since you can "map" this frame onto any region of the VGA memory, you are able to address…
Tag, I've never heard of anything like that before, and it doesn't happen here with our 1024i, FastWrite, VRAM I or II. Have you tried any other boards to see if the problem is specific to the VRAM? Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Randy, The message "80xx7 required but not present" is not being generated by our driver. DLD386-TIGA will work with or without a Weitek math coprocessor, and doesn't use any FPU instructions when driven by 3DS. I'm not sure who is generating that message, but it sounds to me like you…
Randy, I don't have enough information to tell what is going on. What are you setting the RCPADI environment variable to? With respect to the driver dates you gave, are those dates for OPTA's TIGA driver or our DLD386-TIGA driver? It would also help if I could see your config.sys…
Dave, Jake's off to Image System's RasterWorld this week in warm and sunny Lake Placid so I'll answer this for you. Gary's right, the VRAM II is subtly different from the VRAM I. When we got our first one in, we had to change a couple of minor things to…
Evan, Actually, Weitek is into graphics controllers these days. We even did their Acad drivers. Their 5086 and 5186 are VGAs with hardware bitblt and linedraw. They are marketing them just like everyone else these days, as "Windows Accelerators". Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Dave, At last count, there were about 43 companies who has announced S3 based boards. Some of the biggies include the Diamond, Orchid, Cardinal, STB, Genoa, Actix, HP, Matrox, Mylex, and NEC. I'm not sure of the names except Diamond's Stealth, Orchid's Fahrenheit 1280, and Actix's Quantum. And I only…
Gale, You know, I should think of Pixelworks because they're just down the street from us, their CEO lives next door to Jake, and one of our employee's spouses works there. Anyway, they're still around although they seem to be targeting some of the other PC CAD markets instead of…
Dennis, Panacea has uploaded a freeware svga driver called PMADI that will support just about every svga known to mankind. Look for it in the ADI library. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Lansing, DLD386Deluxe supports antialiasing in CEG mode, but not Sierra HiColor mode. Diamond's version of DLD386 does not contain CEG support, because Diamond is not shipping CEG versions of the SpeedStar in quantity. If your customer is interested, we sell Diamond specific upgrades to DLD386Deluxe for $125. Brad Ek [Panacea…
#28275-
S3 video?
Message #28375
Ang, WinSpeed improves on the Tseng drivers more than any other VGA chipset we support. We've seen at least a 100% improvement in nearly every aspect of the PC Labs WinBench test, with gains up to 10X for BITBLTs. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
#28060-
#Display/Card for CAD??
Message #28374
John, A bird's eye view (BEV) is a small window that contains your entire drawing. You can either pop it up when you need it or leave it on the screen at all times. With a BEV, you can quickly pan and zoom around the drawing. Say for instance that…
#28084-
#Display/Card for CAD??
Message #28373
Tom, I wasn't trying to imply that all your boards were over $1,000, because I know they're not. I was just talking in general terms and when I think of high end Acad boards in that price range, I think of Artist and Rasterex. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Edward, No, it's not true. Let me first explain why Windows accelerator boards won't help Ani Pro very much. These accelerator boards speed up Windows through two functions which they do faster in hardware than the PC's CPU can do in software. These are line drawing and BITBLTing. A BITBLT…
Craig, Our AniPro driver works just fine with the STB Powergraph at 640x480x256, 800x600x256, and 1024x768x256. The Tseng ET-4000 VESA driver should also work. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Well, that just goes to show you that as soon as you think you know something, someone else comes along to prove you don't. Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
The problem you are seeing is caused, at least as it was explained to me, by 3DS looking for VGA sync signals. Since an XGA board when running in an XGA doesn't produce any of these signals (some TIGA boards exhibit the same problem), 3DS hangs while waiting forever for…
Gary, Jake reported the XGA hanging problem to Jim Byers at Autodesk, and Jim found and fixed the problem. I think that 3DS waits forever for a VGA vertical blanking signal. This was around CADCamp time frame. You might want to make sure that it made it into 2.0. Brad
#7368-
TSENG ADI drivers
Message #7493
Michael, Jake's out of town right not so I'll take a shot at this one. I'm not sure what driver you're looking for, but if it's one of ours, you can probably get it through TechExport. A contact there is Chris Bailey at 628.77.7800. If not, you can get it…
Harvey, We've written Ani Pro drivers that support the VRAM and the Ultra. While the Ultra will speed up AutoCAD quite a bit, it won't do very much for Animator Pro. I would be very surprised if you noticed any meaningful speed improvement at all. The reason for this is…
Renderman Driver problem
Message #7491
James, Jake is on the road this week so I'll try to help you. DLD-VGA is a real mode ADI 4.0 driver. Renderman doesn't support display output to real mode ADI drivers, so you have to get a protected mode driver like DLD386-VGA. I think Diamond has this on their…
#Graphics Coprocessor?
Message #7443
Gary, The new "Windows Accellerator" boards like the S3 or the Weitek 5086 won't do much for Ani Pro. These boards are not memory mapped in their accllerated modes, so their ability to draw pixels is not any faster than a VGA board. In fact, they could possibly be slower.…
Randy, The problem you are seeing is caused by how your graphics board and monitor sync up at different resolutions. Some boards come with a utility, which is often called vmode, that allow you to configure the board for a particular monitor or class of monitor. Your friend with the…
#21479-
Panacea ADI 4.0
Message #21639
Charles, When you say "disappear", I assume that you're talking about the position of the graphics screen shifting a bit when in higher resolution modes, and this shift is causing some of the graphics area to become obscured. This is caused by the board/monitor combination and is independent of any…
Animator Pro includes support for standard VGA and also SVGA through the VESA driver. There will not be support for the Sierra HiColor RAM/DAC, although it is entirely possible that you may be able to find HiColor support from 3rd party ADI developers such as ourselves. I think that you…