#Par and Win95
14 messages in this thread
Gus,
Thought you may have some insight on this. I'm really trying to get the PAR up
and running under Win95 but not having any luck. It seems to be an
incompatibility between the Pardrv TSR and Win. I'm wondering if because it's a
protected mode driver that's somehow conflicting. Any thoughts would be
appreciated. Thanks.
DM
I use the PAR under Windows/95 but there are some tweaks that must be done.
First of all, it will not be possible to use it "within" Windows as disk access
in Win/95 is done in 32 bit mode (unlike Video which still is largely 16 bits).
What I've done was to create a pif file for a DOS box. This pif has a setting
which "hides" the fact it is running under Windows (the TSR would not,
normally, load under Windows). I then created an Autoexec and Config just for
that DOS box and that's where I load the PAR drivers. It's also there I run the
PAR.EXE (DOS) application and 3D Studio. They all work just fine.
Note that not all video drivers support changing modes from a DOS box to
Windows and Back. This has nothing to do with Vibrant drivers while running 3D
Studio. It's a problem of the Windows driver (written by the Video board
manufacturer). My video is a plain jane Viper and the drivers (which are
luckily 32 bit) will support switching back and forth just fine.
Yep… this is the beginning of the end. From now on, it will be harder and
harder to use "old" hardware 'till nothing else will work other than new stuff
with proper drivers. Manufacturers can't keep up with drivers for their new
stuff, much less to support hardware they no longer sell.
The only way to support the PAR under Win/95 (or worse yet, NT) will be if DPS
provides low level drivers for it in order to run. It's a heck lot easier to
write drivers for Win/95 than for NT. Let's just see where this goes…
Thanks Gus, but you didn't exactly make me feel any better about this. <g> I
can clready run the PAR in a DOS box just fine. It's Razor Pro I'm concerned
about. Correct me if I'm wrong but DPS already has drivers for NT which David
Rhoten says work just fine. Do you have any thoughts on whether or not DPS will
provide support. Seems like they should have already. Thanks again.
DM
No I don't know anything about NT drivers. I haven't dealt with the PAR for
over six months.
Dave:
Whoa! I don't want to say the NT drivers work "FINE", just that they appear to
work acceptably (at least in my brief tests). However, they don't appear to
have the ability to sync a WAV file to the PAR playback. 🙁
Dave
Hi David, >>No sync .WAV to PAR playback.
Bummer. Major. Especially since I just went out and bought NT workstation 3.51
today. Well, without audio playback I'd say I'm going back to WFWG. Boy, I sure
hope everything gets starightened out soon. At least it seems like everyone is
working on it. I've got a question for ya tho'. I'm planning on using dual boot
on a 550Mb C:. How much room should I leave for DOS? Will everything install ok
into the NTFS partition? I've also got a 550Mb D: which has 3DS etc. on it
which I'm going to leave alone. But, I just want to make sure about the NTFS
thing. BTW, do you use Razor Pro? If so what have you been doing with regards
to playing back audio? Just wondering.
DM
Dave:
I read a message from someone here the other day that indicates that the NT
driver is still beta (although it doesn't mention that on their ftp site), so
maybe we'll be seeing sound sync coming up.
WRT DOS/FAT partition size vs NTFS, I don't know — I've left all my drives FAT
for the time being. It's one thing to have to boot to run some piece of
software, but it's another to have to re-boot because you need a file off a
partition that's inaccessible from DOS…. You shouldn't have a problem
installing things to NTFS, though. In fact, it'll provide you with, as I
understand it, a MUCH more robust file system, as far as file-recovery
abilities and better use of large disk sizes.
No, I really haven't used Razor Pro (although I've been thinking about looking
at it or Premier soon). In fact I just added audio for the first time to a
piece about a month ago. Seeing as how generally, in the presentation of an
architectural piece, it's being talked over — audio isn't _THAT_ big a deal
(plus of course, the deadlines are always so bad that that I'm often lucky to
get it to tape in time!<g>).
Dave
Thanks a lot Dave. Hopefully the NT drivers will be out of Beta soon. I'll be
installing NT tonight (and probably this weekend) so I'll let ya know how it
all goes. I wouldn't even consider Premiere if you're looking at getting that
or Razor Pro. RP is a great product – although upgrading to the NT version is
very costly. ($699 plus the initial cost of RP) From what I've heard it's worth
it though. I'm sure I'll pick it up as soon as I can $$ it. Thanks again.
DM
<< Whoa! I don't want to say the NT drivers work "FINE", just that they appear
to work acceptably (at least in my brief tests). >>
In my case, they failed miserably. I used the PAR NT utilities and they
totally trashed all my PAR projects. I did a copy from one file to a new file
with 3 loops and it trashed the original and the resulting copy. The original
had 60 frames, and the result also had 60 frames, so it didn't even loop it, it
just trashed them. I haven't tried to render to the PAR drive under NT yet, so
that and simple playback may work, but the file editing tools didn't work on
my system. There were also several mysterious system crashes while running the
NT PAR utilities.
Hopefully I just didn't have something set up right, which could be since
there was no documentation with the drivers (got them off the FTP site).
J.J.
Yikes! All I've tried doing is playback, so far w/ the NT drivers…. I think
I'll give it a try though, as right now, everything's backed up, and I'm not in
the middle of a PAR project.
Dave
Dave, Dave, Dave:
>> I'll give it a try though, as right now, everything's backed up, and
>> I'm not in the middle of a PAR project.
You know that is absolutely not allowed! You need to be in the middle of a
major deadline, nothing backed up, and absolutely back against the wall before
trying something new!
Greg Pyros
HAH!
You're pretty much right, Greg my boy! But if it helps, knowing that I was
going to be asked to do a juco campus fly-thru, I spent a week (on and off)
working up some flying-out-of-the-clouds effects that I could use to start off
with, and now it (the project) looks like it might not happen. Wadda think?
Does it cut me any slack?
Dave
Dave:
>> I was going to be asked to do a juco campus fly-thru…
Is the Juco Campus anywhere the School of Hard Knocks? :^)
Greg Pyros
Gus, I have 3DS and the Par up and running under W95-DOS. But I've lost my CD
ROM! Any suggestions??
Rich….