*******************E-mail:rob.muller@gmx.net********************************

Documentation for VBEPlus 0.81 beta                          October 17 2001


1.  Introduction
2.  How well does VBEPlus work?
3.  How does it work?
4.  Configuration
5.  System requirements
6.  Known problems/limitations
7.  Acknowledgements
8.  Contacting the author



1.   Introduction.
     
     VBEPlus is a TSR (Terminate Stay Resident) program that adds new
     VESA resolutions to your video card. The resolutions it adds are fully
     user configurable.

     VBEPlus adds all the resolutions your video card does not support like
     the low res modes or 1280x960.

     Currently NVIDIA cards are fully supported, support for all other cards
     is 'experimental'.
     
2.   How well does VBEPlus work?
     
     It works great! When using an NVIDIA video card.
    
3.   How does it work?
     
     VBEPlus can not make totally new video modes. It can only modify the
     resolution of already existing video modes. It searches a mode with
     the same bitdepth and a resolution it fits in. The surplus of the 
     resolution is blanked by modifying the video card's blanking registers.

     Example:
     Your card does not support 320x240x16bpp and you want to add this mode.
     VBEPlus searches a mode it can adapt to the mode you want. Assume that
     your card does support 640x480x16bpp. When an application sets the new
     320x240 mode, VBEPlus first sets 640x480 and then blanks the surplus of
     the image. Now, you can play your favorite game in 320x240x16bpp but
     the image is displayed in the upper left corner of the screen.
     You might be able to correct this with the controls of your monitor,
     but this may not be possible. In order to get the image full
     screen, you need to adjust the timings to reflect the new situation.
     This is where UniRefresh kicks in. Just load UniRefresh and now you
     can see 320x240x16bpp full screen.

     To unload VBEPlus, just execute it with any parameter. 
     'vbeplus /u' will do, but you can try to be friendly also:
     'vbeplus -please be so kind to unload'

4.   Configuration

     For configuration a config file (vbeplus.cfg) is used. This file can be
     edited with your favorite text editor.

     All the text on a line after a semicolon (;) is ignored.

     * BlockOldModes = yes/no  If yes, the original VESA modes are blocked.
       (default = no)                   This is handy for testing purposes.

     * BPP = 8 32      This will set the default bit depths to 8 and 32 bpp.
                       When this value is not specified, all the bit depths
                       will be used by default.

     * X Y (bpp1 bpp2) This will add resolution XxY at bpp1 and bpp2.
                       If you do not specify bpp, the default bitdepths will
                       will be added.

                       The X value needs to be a multiple of 8.

                       example:
                       256 228 16 24  This adds 256x228x16bpp /256x228x24bpp
                       1280 960       This adds 1280x960 at the default bit
                                      depths.


5.   System requirements
     
     *   NVIDIA video card
     *   MS-DOS v3.3 or higher.
     *   80386 or better.
     
6.   Known problems/limitations

     VBEPlus makes use of the blanking registers in a totally new and 
     unforeseen way. Because of that, it is possible that the time VBEPlus
     wants to blank is too long and the blanking registers overflow. The 
     result of this is that some garbage is shown outside of the real image.
     If you use UniRefresh to make the image full screen again this should
     not happen.

7.   Acknowledgements

     Thanks for testing:

     Falkentyne Dragan,
     Kevin White.

8.   Contacting the author

     If you have questions/comments, find a bug, have problems with
     VBEPlus or if you just (dis)like VBEPlus sent me an email.
     If you have problems/found a bug please give detailed information
     like:
     *   Type of video card/CPU/operating system
     *   Type of software VBE driver if present
     *   Contents of vbeplus.cfg and vbeplus.log
     *   Program with which the problem/bug occurred



     Rob Muller
     Email: rob.muller@gmx.net
     WWW  : http://unirefresh.demonews.com




DISCLAIMER

THIS SOFTWARE AND THE ACCOMPANYING FILES ARE DISTRIBUTED "AS IS"
AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. NO
RESPONSIBILITIES FOR POSSIBLE DAMAGES OR EVEN FUNCTIONALITY CAN
BE TAKEN. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THIS
PROGRAM. ALL TRADEMARKS ARE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.