#Viper & 3dsr2
21 messages in this thread
Has anyone out there had this problem of not being able to get more than 256
colors with the Panacea drivers supplied with the Diamond Viper? Try as I may,
I can't seem to get it. Diamond's help on their forum has been useless. I'd
just for once like to be able to see what hi-color looks like.
md
Mike,
I have been able to play some of my animations from within Windows,
with the driver set to 16 million colors. Usually the current drivers are
causing a protection fault when I play animations within windows. The only
way I have been able to consistently play animations on the computer monitor is
with PLAY80, a VESA Dos player. I am not sure if PLAY80 will display more that
256 colors.
Scott Higgins
16.7m Colors?? My driver box only gives me options for 256 or 65k under
Windows. I've never used the Windows player. I too was getting GPF's so I let
it disintegrate into shelfware. I'll look around for the player you mentioned.
Thanks for the reply.
md
I display true-color with the Viper and those drivers, Mike, however I must say
that the set-up was a bit of a bear. You've got to pay *very* close attention
to ALL the set-up related issues in ALL of the manuals. Make sure your
VPRmode.exe is configured correctly for your monitor, and all environment
variables are properly set in your 3DS startup batch file, or whatever you use.
When everything is set up correctly, delete the 3dadi.cfg file from your 3DS
directory, and start 3DS. You should now be able to choose the resolution and
color you need. A little advice: If you are using QEMM (or some other memory
manager), be sure to exclude the A000-C7FF area to head off any memory conflict
problems.
Below are the batch file lines I use before starting 3DS:
C:\VIPER\CHKPATH C:\VIPER IF ERRORLEVEL 3 PATH C:\VIPER;%PATH% SET
VIPERPATH=C:\VIPER SET DLDCFG=c:\viperdld SET RCPADI=c:\viperdld\RCTURBOD.EXP
Make sure you install ALL the stuff from the disks in the directories they
specify, and follow the TurboDLD driver instructions thoroughly, particularly
chapter 9.
Hope this helps…
-Alan Iglesias
Alan,
Thanks for your reply. Everything you mentioned, I've done. My paths are a
little different, but that's not a problem. Reading your reply gave me an idea
though. I use DOS 6 and I have a special config for the Autodesk products.
(3dsr2 and Acad12) What I just discovered, thanks to you, is that 3dsr2 is
trying to use an updated driver for Acad12 via RCTURBOL.EXP. Note that it is
not RCTURBOD.EXP. RCTURBOL.EXP is a driver set that I downloaded from Panacea
that says Weitek Power 9000 instead of Diamond Viper when you get to the card
selection menu. When I installed the Turbodld Lite drivers, I of course,
changed the RCPADI statement, which has obviously had a dramatic effect on
3dsr2. I am now going to remove the set statements for RCPADI from autoexec.bat
and put them back into batch files. Hopefully this will clear things up. I'll
let you know what happens.
md
Hmmm…sounds like you caught it, Mike. Lemme know how it goes.
Good luck,
-Alan
Alan,
Arrggghhh! I reinstalled the Turbodld drivers, set up batch files for 3ds and
Acad12, and proceeded to go down the drain. Acad won't even load, even at
640x480x256 and 3ds comes up with the same garbage as before.
I'm going to go over this all again when I have a little more time. Right now,
it's time for bed.
Talk atcha later.
md
Whoa! Sounds like no fun at all, Mike. Listen, I'm gonna Email you my phone
number so we can talk a little about this if you wish. If your system is in
basicly good shape (ie: no other conflicts) we should be able to get ya up and
running pretty quick in real-time.
-Alan
Mike,
The TurboDLD Lite (RCTURBOL.EXP) should function exactly the same under 3D
Studio as the TurboDLD Deluxe (RCTURBOD.EXP). Please let me know if you have
any more problems.
-Chris
Panacea
Mike,
What kind of problems are you having with our driver? I must have missed the
beginning of this thread. We fully support all resolutions on the Viper, up to
800x600x24bit if you have 2meg VRAM.
-Chris
Panacea
Well hello Chris, I sent you some email last week. Sounds like you didn't get
it.
Here's what's happening. I've got 3dsr2 running on a Diamond m/b (with the most
current bios) and the 2 meg Viper VLB. I cannot get 3ds to run with anything
higher than 256 colors at 640×480. I have not tried any other resolutions,
because I want to stay close to what is television. I re-installed all the
software today, thinking that something might have gone wrong with the original
installation. That didn't help.
If I try to use 65k colors, the screen on 3ds bootup goes wacky. By that I mean
that the normal area that you would see, is compressed to the left side of the
raster. It's been compressed down to approx. 40% of the total screen area. The
remaining 60% is columns of scraggly lines in a gawd awful pink color. 3ds runs
normally, meaning I have control over the program, but the display is totally
wrong. If I try to create a light, and I move the bars to select the color, the
sample box stays stuck on white. note: this was with the Turbodld lite driver
that I downloaded last week. [rcturbol.exp]
With rcturbod.exp, I get the aforementioned compression of the viewing area,
and I don't go any farther.
At this point, let me ask you this. Instead of running the batch files, I have
incorporated the set statements into an environment file that loads everytime I
boot under my [Autodesk] configuration w/DOS 6. (I've also tried using the
batch files "as is" with the same results.) Is there any problem in doing that?
Command.com is not capable of doing this, but Ndos is. And that is the command
processor that I am using. Have your drivers been tested with alternate command
processors? Are they compatible? Maybe I need to use plain old command.com???
Got any ideas? I'm worn out.
md
Mike,
Hmmmmmm…..sounds pretty weird to me. I've got a Viper in my machine right
now, so I'm going to go get the TurboDLD Lite off the BBS to see if I can get
it running on my machine. I've got a Micronics motherboard and I am running
NDOS as well, so yes, we have tested our drivers with other command processors
{I'd die without NDOS :^)}
I'll let you know what I come up with. BTW, are you getting choices in the
configuration for all resolutions, up to 800x600x16mil?
-Chris
Panacea
Chris,
Yes, I do have the resolution choices available to me. I also checked the files
you asked about. Here are the values – [3ds.set] Main-Display = RCPADI
Render-Display = RCPADI Material Display = RCPADI
[dldsetup.dat] Display mode: 803 Render mode: 803
I'm also enclosing the pertinent sections of my config.sys, environ.aut and
autoexec.bat files. Maybe you can spot something in there that I don't see.
(config.sys) [common] break=on country=001
[Menu] menudefault=Normal,15 menucolor=7,0 menuitem=Common
menuitem=Plain_Vanilla menuitem=Autodesk <—— menuitem=Normal
[Autodesk] files=40 buffers=5 stacks=24,512 <—- Is this too many? fcbs=1,0
dos=high DEVICE=C:\QEMM\DOSDATA.SYS set loadhidata=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.RF
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS sh:n fr=c800 x=a000-c7ff ST:M RAM xst=c000
…embmem=15360 dma=32 ha=32 RF DEVICE=C:\QEMM\DOS-UP.SYS @C:\QEMM\DOS-UP.DAT
DEVICE=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys /RF c:\dos\ramdrive.sys 4096 /e
DEVICE=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys /RF c:\audio\mvsound.sys d:7 q:12 s:1,220,1,5 m:0 j:0
DEVICE=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys /RF c:\audio\mtmcde.sys /d:mscd001 /p:300 /a:0 /m:64
…/t:5 /i:11 /x DEVICE=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys /RF c:\scplus\scpcdext.exe
/d:mscd001 DEVICE=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys /RF c:\qemm\st-dbl.sys
SHELL=c:\qemm\loadhi.com /RF c:\ndos.com @c:\nut\ndos.ini /P
(autoexec.bat) :Common @echo off prompt $d$_$p$g goto %config%
:Autodesk alias /r alias.lst set /r environ.aut c:\vpr\chkpath c:\vpr
c:\qemm\loadhi /RF vprmode vesa c:\qemm\loadhi /RF C:\MOUSE\mouse.exe
c:\qemm\loadhi /RF c:\audio\mscdex.exe /d:mscd001 /m:10 /e /l:g c:\qemm\loadhi
/RF c:\scplus\scplus.exe /install goto end
:end cls ver
(environ.aut) comspec=c:\ndos.com
path=c:\;c:\mouse;c:\qemm;c:\scplus;c:\nut;c:\dos;c:\win;c:\win\pif;c:\vpr;
…c:\audio;c:\zip;d:\acad;d:\3ds;d:\ani;d:\acad\drv prompt=$d$_$p$g
xtgtemp=c:\xtg temp=d:\temp tmp=d:\temp pkzip.cfg=c:\zip nbackup=c:\nbackup
nd=c:\nut nu=c:\nut ndshell=/l:c:\ /u symantec=c:\nut pcplus=c:\tc\
pctools=c:\pctools\data dircmd=/pvw setdos=/a1 /f1 /n1 qdpmi=swapfile
c:\qemm\qdpmi.swp 2048 viperpath=c:\vpr
acad=d:\acad\support;d:\acad\fonts;d:\acad\ads acadcfg=d:\acad
acaddrv=d:\acad\drv dldcfg=d:\acad\drv dspadi=d:\acad\drv
p9000resini.env=d:\acad\drv rcpadi=d:\acad\drv\rcturbod.exp
rdpadi=d:\acad\drv\rcturbod.exp
>> I'd die without NDOS
If you think NDOS is keen, you ought to try 4DOS v4 by JP Software.
Symantic/Norton bought the rights to v3.0x of 4DOS so they could include it in
NU 6.0. 4DOS v4.0 came out after DOS 5.0. (WOW! It just occured to me that v5.0
must be coming out soon since DOS 6.0 is out!!! WOW! I just really excited
myself!)
Dan
ps – Just remembered… if you are using the NDOS in v7 of NU, then you are
ok… it is based on 4DOS 4.0. (Too many versions!)
Dan,
We upgraded to NU v7 right when we heard it was available, just to see what
kind of cool new stuff they added to NDOS.
-Chris
<Command.com? What's that?>
Chris,
As of this moment, it looks like I'm on track with hi-color. I spoke by voice
with Alan Iglesias who took me on a little tour of vprmode and the setup
routine. Instead of using the supplied NEC4fg setting, we customized one.
Amongst other things, it seems that the material editor had the wrong
resolution. I didn't know any different. The setup program never told me that I
was choosing a resolution for it. I also had an RDPADI set statement that may
have contributed to the dilemma.
Now I have another question. Diamond has informed me that there is a newer
version of the Turbodld drivers. 1.02? Are these the same as the LITE drivers?
md
Mike,
I just tried the TurboDLD Lite that is on the BBS and everything worked fine
for me. I configured my display resolution as 800x600x65k and render
restolution 800x600x16mil. Pardon me if you've already posted this, but can you
list the following:
What are DSPADI, RDPADI, and RCPADI set to before running 3DS?
In your 3DS.SET file, what to the following entries say:
MAIN-DISPLAY
RENDER-DISPLAY
MATERIAL-DISPLAY
In your DLDSETUP.DAT file, there is a line for DISPLAY MODE and RENDER
MODE, what do these lines say?
We'll get this straightened out one way or another!
-Chris
Panacea
Just a thought, Mike, in my experiance, anytime others are getting drivers to
work and I can't I immediately look at the high memory area and what regions
are being excluded. This applies to both Himem.sys/emm386 and QEMM. Also,
I've had things screwed up in CMOS which caused the video garbage you
described. When in doubt you can exclude a whole major area of contigous hi
memory but for me that is not efficient and defeats the purpose of high memory
managers. I have spent hours tweaking excludes to the point of just before
introduction of picture destruction. I'm using the Panacea driver and it works
fine but has some limitations on my 928 S3 board. Chris has promised a new
upgrade to expand the 24bit capabilities but I haven't heard from him lately.
I hope this insight to my work will help. Good luck!
Don,
I am excluding a000-c7ff and using xst=c000 with Stealth active. Qemm ver.7.01.
I began to wonder about that too, so I checked, so far, it seems to be the way
Diamond recommends.
Thanks for the thought.
md
PMJI, Mike, but after reading your note to Chris, I would venture to guess that
you are instructing the Viper to use a mode/timing not supported by your
monitor! Go in your Viper directory and run vprmode.exe and make sure ALL the
modes have the proper timing for your monitor. The Viper is capable of
extremely fast scan rates that may not be supported by your current monitor.
Vprmode.exe is not the most intuitive program I've ever used, so give me a call
about it if you wish.
-Alan
Ok, I'll check back into vprmode. It should still be set for my NEC 4fg which
is a listed monitor. I could try changing the memory addressing and see if that
helps. Where is your's set at?
I checked vprmode, and found that it was set for fixed frequency. I changed it
back to NEC 4fg. (This was only a temp thing because I reinstalled yesterday)
However, I still get the same problems.
md