The Universal VESA TSR ---------------------- Copyright (C) 1993 Kendall Bennett All rights reserved. What is it? ----------- The Universal VESA TSR is a small Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program that provides extends the Video BIOS routines of SuperVGA video cards to make them compatible with the Video Electonics Standards Association (VESA) recommended extensions. By having a video card that has a VESA compatible BIOS, or by installing this small TSR, programs that support the VESA programming interface will work correctly for your SuperVGA. This helps to solve a lot of problems with compatability between different SuperVGA cards on the market. Why use it? ----------- You may already have a VESA TSR for you video card, or you video card may have a VESA compatible BIOS already, so why would you want to use this program? The simple answer is that most of the TSR's that exist today, and a lot of the not-so-new SuperVGA cards that are around implement an older version of the VESA programming interface (if any at all). For this reason, some programs that use the advanced features of the new VESA standard will not work with the TSR or BIOS that you currently have. So what advanced features does this TSR provide that other's don't? The Universal VESA TSR implements the VESA Version 1.2 programming interface, which supports the following features: - VESA page flipping. High performance animation programs can use your card to full potential using the VESA BIOS to implement extended page flipping (imagine, 1024x768x16 double buffered animation, or even 800x600x256 and 640x400x32k/64k on a 1Mb video card!!). - Support for the 32k, 64k and 16 million color video modes. As well as supporting the industry standard 16 and 256 color video modes. - Speed. The bank switching code in this package tends to run faster than the routines embedded in the VIDEO BIOS of some video cards. Hardware Requirements --------------------- The Universal VESA TSR contains '386 dependant code, so it will only run on machine that have and 80386 or better CPU. Currently the Universal VESA TSR supports the following SuperVGA chipsets (note that not all of these have been fully tested): - ATI Technologies 18800, 28800 - Ahead A & B - Chips & Technologies 82c451/452/453 - Everex - Genoa Systems GVGA - OAK Technologies OTI-037C, OTI-067, OTI-077 - Paradise PVGA1A, WD90C00/10/11/30/31 - NCR 77C20/21/22E - Trident 88/8900 - Video7 V7VGA versions 1-5 - Tseng Labs ET3000, ET4000 - AcuMos AVGA2 - S3 86c911/924/801/805/928 - Advance Logic AL2101 SuperVGA - MXIC 86010 SuperVGA - Primus 2000 SuperVGA - RealTek 3106 SuperVGA - Cirrus CL-GD 5422 SuperVGA The Universal VESA TSR seems to have problems with QEMM, since QEMM does something weird with the Video BIOS. In order to fix this problem, you should use the QEMM 'exclude' options to exclude the Video BIOS area. Do this by including the following in the QEMM options: EXCLUDE=C000-C1FF How do I install it? -------------------- You can install the TSR from the command line, or from your autoexec.bat file. Don't worry about installing it twice, it will automatically detect if you have already installed it. To install it simply type: univesa from the command line. It will determine what type of SuperVGA card you have installed and install itself accordingly. You may also use command line options to modify the the automatic video card detection logic. The following is produced by type 'univesa -h' at the command line: Options are: -v - Check for VESA BIOS first -s - Force detection of SuperVGA 'name' -c - Force detection of SuperVGA chipset (numerical id) -m - Force memory size to 'size' -d - Force DAC type (0:VGA, 1:15 bit, 1:16 bit, 3:24 bit) -i - Do not perform SuperVGA detection It is possible the SuperVGA detection code will hang the machine on old VGA/SVGA cards. You can optionally force the program to work with any combination of card, chipset, memory size and DAC, but unless you specify the -i option, unspecified values will be filled in automatically for you. Thus you if the detection code did not correctly identify you video card configuration, you can force the TSR to work with the correct values. When installed the Universal VESA TSR takes up approximately 9k of memory. All of the code required to detect the video adapter and available video modes is removed after the program is installed, saving on the amount of memory required. You may also load the TSR high. Can I get the source code? -------------------------- Yes, the full source code for this library is available, along with a number of test programs (with source) for programming SuperVGA cards in a device independant manner in a SuperVGA Test Kit Library. You can probably download this from Simtel20 or garbo (or one of it's mirrors) or you can ftp the absolute latest version from: godzilla.cgl.rmit.oz.au: kjb/MGL/svgakt??.zip How can I contact the Author? ----------------------------- If you have any corrections or updates to the code in this package, or you have any questions you would like asked, feel free to contact me through one of the following methods. NOTE: I am going on vacation from 30th March 1993 until the middle of August 1993, so I will _not_ be able to respond to any correspondence from people during this period, so please do _not_ send me any email until I return. Internet: kjb@citri.edu.au Snail Mail: Home: Kendall Bennett 15 Stevenson Street Kew Victoria 3101 AUSTRALIA Work: Kendall Bennett RMIT Advanced Computer Graphics Centre CITRI Building, 723 Swanston Street Carlton Victoria 3053 AUSTRALIA SuperVGA Test Library, Copyright (C) 1992,1993 Kendall Bennett. Universal VESA TSR, Copyright (C) 1993 Kendall Bennett. All Rights Reserved. The SuperVGA Test Library and the Universal VESA TSR are not public domain software. They are copyrighted software, Copyright (C) 1992,1993 Kendall Bennett. It is however free software, or what some people term 'Freeware'. You may use it for whatever you wish, even using it to write public domain, freeware, shareware and commercial software. You may NOT however re-distribute modified versions of the source code nor distribute the source code for a profit. If you make any worthwhile changes to the source code, you can send them to me for inclusion in a future release. Since this software is free, it is supplied WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. It is supplied as it, in the hope the people will find it useful, and that it will advance the state of the art of computer software.