Tim Ryan donated a bunch of 486 computers to Kiwanis from Borders, some of
which have built-in video.  It reads:
Cirrus  Paradise  WD512CBR  903C1  VESA VBE 4160

I found a VESA 2.0 driver for Cirrus (clvb320.zip).  What do I do now in order
to set up one of these computers with Win31 in 256 colors/640x480?
The VESA driver is 5K.  

22 responses total.

The VESA driver that I downloaded is irrelevant, needs 1 or 2 M card.

www.bookcase.com/library/software/win3x.driver.video.html
has a very large list of video drivers, with links to downloads.
There were two for Paradise WD series, one VGA, and one SVGA
(640x480 256 color and 1024x768 2 or 16 color).  All the drivers
for the S3 video chips, one of which we had a lot of trouble
finding before, plus several individual drivers.  ATI drivers.
Drivers for lots of brands I never heard of before.
The Paradise WD driver was at winsite.

It did not work.  Win31 loaded some files then asked for another disk (I had
unzipped the zip file into a directory) and then crashed with a Sharing
Violation message, repeatedly.  We will use a video card with a known good
driver instead, and get 800 resolution.  What causes a Sharing Violation
error?

Bill suggested adding more locks to share.exe to eliminate the sharing
violation.  Jim had told me to remove all those numbers after share.exe in
autoexec.bat because they only told it where to load high.  I put them back,
and now there is no sharing violation.  But Win31 is still looking for files
that are not in that directory.  One of the files in the directory (that came
from the downloaded zip file) says oemdisk1.  Another files is 1024.drv.  No
sign of a driver for 256 colors, so it appears to be missing from that file.
Off driver hunting again.
        Does anyone know if there is some universal driver for Win31 that will
work on a VESA VBE chip?  It is supposed to be a standard, and NewDeal and
Arachne have these drivers.

Had to reboot to get back to VGA.  Tried a paradise 256 color driver.  Windows
would not even load, just gave me a blinking cursor, had to reboot.  Tried
an NCR video chip driver (the ATT computer is made by NCR, not that chip
number but I tried it anyway).  A very elegant thin strip blinking screen with
blinking cursor, had to turn off the computer to get out of this one.

Klaus just offered us a bunch of 386s and things, one of which I hope will
have an SVGA card with a common driver.

Why would a video driver interfere with even loading Windows (3.1)?

Because one of the things Win3.1 loads first is the video driver, and if the
video driver doesn't work it has no way to display anything.  That's why you
can set the video driver from the text-mode SETUP program.

Win95, in the same situation, falls back to 640x480 16-color mode, usually.

This was not just a case of not being able to display.  I could not even exit
Windows by rebooting, had to turn the computer off.  How would the video
drivers interfere with rebooting?

If the video driver locks up the computer badly enough trying to initialize
a card that isn't there, it might not be able to respond to the keyboard. 
In that case, Ctrl-Alt-Del will do nothing.

That explains it then.  I did not know you could initialize a video card, just
a modem.  This driver was for an NCR chip of a different number than what was
in there.  Bill suggests that the problem with the 256 color Paradise card
(it would reboot but not display anything) is that the chip simply cannot
handly 256 colors at any resolution.  It probably can handle 1024 at 16 colors
with its 512K but that is not helpful for Netscape.  Too many websites now
have colored backgrounds and at 16 colors they come out dithered (a
crosshatched pattern) and you cannot read the text against them.

Is there some sort of switch to turn off dithering in Netscape so you get some
solid color?  (Netscape 4.08/Win31).

There used to be a way to turn off backgrounds and force Netscape to use the
colors you pick; maybe there still is.

I told netscape to use my colors but it refuses to do so.  It will at least
display links in whatever color I choose, so I chose orange, which displays
better against a blue background (seems to be a favorite background color)
than does blue.
        Am I correct that the crosshatching effect is from dithering?  If not,
what does dithering mean?

You're correct.  Dithering simulates colors that aren't available by putting
pixels of different colors next to each other so your eye will blend them. 
It doesn't work very well at 16 colors and with low resolutions, but it's
pretty effective in 256 color mode.

I will see if there is some way to turn it off, but in the meantime I found
an SVGA card (Tseng ET4000, for which we have the drivers).  My landlord is
being rather patient about this.

When I tried to install the Tseng drivers by typing C:\windows\setup, instead
of bothering to load Windows, the computer offered me a long choice of NCR
drivers of 256 colors or more, most of which the 512 video RAM would not be
able to support (there may be a way to add video RAM).  When I tried to choose
640x480 256 color it asked for the NCR Windows31 Driver Disk, so apparently
the BIOS or something puts information into the setup program that does not
show up when you are running Windows.  Wonder where to find a Driver Disk....
(I had downloaded an NCR Win31 driver set that did not work earlier).

Found and installed the Tseng ET4000 drivers, in a file mistakenly labelled
......htm instead of ......zip.  Two websites referred to it as ......zip
and at both it started to download as ......htm so I renamed and unzipped it.
The drivers go to 64K colors at 800x600 but the card only goes to 256 (gave
me error messages, not a scrambled screen).  Is there a family of Tseng ET4000
video chips?  The computer for my landlord now works well - higher resolution,
lots of colors, a speedy 14.4K modem that has gone over 4K on downloads (file
compression?) and a fast 486DX66 CPU.  Nicer than what i use for work:)
I have decided to throw in, for free, my month's free membership to an adult
website which someone gave me in exchange for a translation, so that he will
have something to view with all those colors.

We just went through all the video cards at Kiwanis.  We discovered that cards
with 256K video RAM can all display at least 640x480 at 16 colors, some can
display 800x600 at 16 colors and/or 640x400 at 256 colors.  With 512K RAM they
can display at least 640x400 at 256 colors.  One (Tseng ET3000) could display
1024 at 16 colors and 640x480 at 156 colors.  The third (also 512K) displayed
all these modes plus 800x600 at 256 colors.  Cards with 1M RAM can display
at least 800x600 with 256 colors. Some will go up to 1024 256 or 640 32K or
64K or 16 million or 800 64K - no way to predict based on RAM.  Why?

We moved parts around from 7 bad to 7 good cards to bring them up to 512K and
have frame covers (metal strips) and Jim experimented with the switches on
some so that they would display in color instead of monochrome or yellow or
nothing.  THere used to be a lot of variation before the VGA standard.
WhatVGA shows something close to 100 possible modes, some of which work on
some monitors.  Some monitors will display 1024 but not 800.  Some will do
800 but only at 16 color.  They all seem to do 640x480 at 256 colors.

I just tried out three gif viewers and attempted to try another on my computer
with onboard VGA (256K video RAM).  The fourth was Compushow and it asked me
to test out a SVGA driver (which scrambled the screen) and it had no settings
for VGA.  Text mode worked okay after I finished viewing the gifs, which were
at various resolutions under 640 in order to achieve 256 colors (320,x200,
100x148).  After turning the computer off and then on, I cannot get VGA to
display, only a light background with a drifting pattern which looks like
loosely connect strings of cursors.  Running Syschk, Procomm, or WP does not
produce text, just moving patterns of grey (alway greyscale).  Typing mode
co80 or mode co40 does not help, nor does rebooting.  Typing mode mono
switches the display to a TTL monochrome monitor which I plugged into an MGA
card in the same computer.
        Is it possible that the monitor was damaged by running Compushow, or
that the VGA chip was somehow reset (if so, how to set it back to VGA)?
        The TTL monitor displays text properly and runs Procomm okay.

The monitor worked (displayed text) when plugged into another computer, then
when plugged back into the original computer it also worked.  I don't know
if unplugging the monitor did something to the VGA chip in the computer, or
if using the monitor in VGA text mode reset something in the monitor.  ???

We have a Tseng ET4000 video chip (Windows runs it with a Tseng driver, and
Syschk identifies it as such as does WhatVGA2) on a Diamond Speedstar video
board with four switches.  We figured out that switch 3 (8-bit versus 16-bit)
has to be switched to run Windows or DOS-based programs in color and the other
switches don't seem to make any difference (normal versus turbo).  We have
the manual and the utilities and drivers disks.  The manual says to install
the disks (I did, from drive a: to drive c:) and then to run vmode.com from
its own subdirectory to change the mode from CGA to EGA to VGA to MDA to
Hercules.  I typed vmode or vmode Hercules and am told that Speedstar is not
installed.  I installed it again, same thing.
        Vdiag.exe works and displays mono with bold, revers, blink, and
underlined, which is EXACTLY what I have been hunting for to run WP51 in
Hercules mode instead of VGA so I can see bold and underline instead of
colors.  There are also up to 4 extra fonts possible and you can make your
own, so it would be a close approximation to a Hercules Plus card, if I could
get the blasted thing working!  Has anyone ever used one of these SVGA cards
that can run in Hercules mode?  I am getting tired of using two monitors and
would rather be just flipping switch 3.  
        Jim came up with another solution, to drill a hole in the side of the
case of a computer with onboard video and a switch to switch it on and off,
that would let the VGA (640x480-16 million colors - the Tseng goes to 1024)
share the computer with a Hercules Plus card, which overlaps the video area
of RAM.  WIthout this switch you can have a SVGA and a plain Hercules in the
same computer.  But it needs two monitors without VMODE>
        Are there other video cards that can switch modes from SVGA to Herc?

I downloaded an updated copy (1993) of vmode.com and ran it.  
Diamond speedSTAR is not installed.  The card says Diamond Speedstart VGA.
What exactly is not installed?

Syschk recognizes this card as a Cirrus Logic when we set it to 8 instead of
16 bits.  So we tried setting the card back to 16 bits (which normally would
not display DOS programs in color) and then vmode worked (in color).  Mode
vga (at 16 bits) will run WP51 in color.  Mode Hercules runs in in Hercules
mode with underline and blinking and bold and reverse video, as desired.

When the card is set to 8 bit (for color when running Syschk and Windows
Setup) I can run vdiag.exe and do the mono test but not the color test, which
just puts me back to the prompt.  If I exit vdiag by typing X WP51 runs in
color, but if I run mono (M) and then type C (color) to get thrown back to
the prompt, it leaves the mode in mono, so I can thus also run WP51 in
Hercules mode when set to 8 bit.

After running WP51, ran Vmode VGA, then VMode VESA.  Then tried to set up
Arachne, which had refused to run at anything but plain VGA before.  This time
we managed to get it to 640x480-256 colors.  The setup program appears to
think this is a 386 because of the VGA.  

This is therefore sort of a compromise computer - runs WP51 in Hercules mode
(but not Hercules Plus), runs Windows in up to 1024-256 color (but not 16
million colors), runs Arachne in 640-256 colors (but not in 800 mode or in
FastPC mode).  But it is simpler than having one computer for Windows and
Arachne and one for WP51, or one computer with two monitors that will run
Hercules Plus if I switch the video switch and Windows at only 640.  

Does anyone make a SVGA card that can run in Hercules mode and also does more
than 256 colors?  

The original ET4000 card works with vmode on several monitors.  The other two
ET4000s do not work with vmode as MDA or Hercules (they do with other modes).
But now I do not need them, as Bill Levak explained how to use mode mono in
DOS 6.  It switched to MDA on all the computers I just tried it on (blinking,
underline, bold) except for the two I have been using, to which I had added
an MGA card so I could also plug in a TTL monitor.  Bill says that mode mono
will only work if you don't have a second adapter plugged in.


TTL amber still is easier on the eyes and easier to carry around than VGA,
but is not all that good at displaying images so I will just keep that set
up for my wordprocessing computer.

Arachne, says Bill, has a not-very-reliable setup program, and can be
reconfigured manually to work with a 486 that Arachne thinks is a 386.
Probably not related to the video card.  We can change the video card to
something it recognizes as 800x600, instead of Tseng ET4000.

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