TIP No. 155   Increasing Video Speed
               On A Genoa EGA Card

    If you are using a GENOA SuperEGA HiRes+ card, (Level 7) you can
speed up the video operation about 30% by moving the DIP Switches to
the following positions:  (No. 1 is at the bottom of the switch
pack, and OFF is toward the Power Supply.) 

       No. 6  ON
       No. 5  ON 
       No. 4  OFF 
       No. 3  OFF 
       No. 2  ON 
       No. 1  ON


This configuration will boot the machine in a "VGA" emulation mode.  You
will know right away if the change took place, because the VGA font will
appear on screen, with a dot in the middle of a zero, instead of a slash.
The default configuration had been with Switches 2 and 4 reversed.  That
was fine, but introduced a large number wait states onto the bus, which
in turn slowed down video performance.  The configuration presented here
puts about 40 to 50% fewer wait states on the bus, which translates to a
speed increase of about 50%.  This number might be different for your
machine, but a difference still should be noticable.  (By the way, the
screen you now see upon boot-up is in 720 x 400 resolution.  Or so the
manual says, anyway.)

The reason that I tried this mode was to find an "Auto-Switching"
configuration, so that I could put CGA graphics programs on my NEC
MultiSync Plus monitor, which doesn't have direct CGA compatabilty.  The
board now automatically double scans the program, in the correct colors,
and I no longer have to use the SPEGA.EXE program, which sometimes turned
the display into a monochrome screen.  Of course, SPEGA.EXE still works
just fine.  Everything I've tried with it so far works like a charm.  Of
course, I don't own every piece of software in the world, so there might
be something out there that doesn't work, but I wouldn't want it anyway,
if it doesn't work as expected.

As you might guess, the first thing I tried with this new configuration
was AutoCAD, both with the regular drivers, and with the ADI stuff from
Genoa, and others.  No worries, mate!

This is known to work on Level 7 cards, but unfortunately, it doesn't
work on the earlier Level 5 cards.  Hope it helps you, too!


                                               Al
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