Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/03/03/07:19:39
Gary Powell writes:
> I am running the latest Permedia2 drivers for windows. However, my
> DOS sessions report only 2 VESA modes available. I have the Scitech
> Display Doctor (trial only 17 days left) running which increases the
> VESA modes to 59! I have been very impressed with the driver but not
> quite impressed enough to shell out the $40.
Only two modes in the manufacturer supplied VESA driver? That is absolutely
insane! I have to say that if I had bought this card, that would be serious
grounds for taking it back and demanding a refund: the VESA BIOS is an
industry standard, and I don't think it is acceptable for people to sell
hardware with such a poor implementation of it.
Out of interest, which two modes are supported? (the Allegro vesainfo
utility will list them).
> Anyway, I am rather saddened by the VESA situation I am left in.
> I looked at the FreeVB/AF, but my chipset is not supported. Is the
> FreeVB/AF an on going project? Will the latest (or almost latest)
> video boards/chips be supported?
FreeBE/AF is a sporadic project, in that it doesn't have anyone working
on it fulltime, but depends on people to contribute individual drivers
as and when they feel so inclined. This is really the only way that it
can work, because you can't write a driver unless you own the card in
question, and you'd have to be really weird individual to want to spend
your life buying new graphics cards purely in order to make drivers for
them :-) At the moment we have five accelerated drivers, which are the
result of five different developers putting some effort into making things
work on their particular hardware. Obviously not everyone will have the
time or skills to do this, but it would be fantastic if you did feel
like working on some Permedia support, and bumping the number of drivers
up to six...
A major problem with supporting new hardware is that the manufacturers
often refuse to release specs for it, but this doesn't seem to be
a problem with the Permedia. I can't find any technical references on
the manufacturer website, but there is a driver for it in the latest
version of XFree86 (www.xfree86.org), so you could get the necessary
information from that.
> I have tried to briefly look at the ML/GL source code from Scitech,
> but I am having troubles with the include with Rhide and/or djgpp.env
> as well as not being certain with where to begin with it.
MGL won't help with your problem: it's a library for using VESA drivers
in the same way that Allegro is, and doesn't contain any hardware level
SVGA drivers. So you would still need a capable VESA driver to set the
modes.
Shawn Hargreaves.
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