ÜÜÜÜ Ü Ü Ü ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜ Ū ß Ū Ū Ū Ū Ū ß Ū Ū ŪÜÜÜŪ ŪÜÜÜ ŪßÜßŪ Ū Ū Ū ŪÜÜÜ Ū Ū Ū Ū Ū Ū Ū ŪÜÜŪ ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜŪ Ū Ū Ū Ū ŪÜÜŪ ŚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄæ ³ ³ ³ V I D E O P A L E T T E T O O L V3.50 ³ ³ ³ ĄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄŁ Programs and Documentation are Copyright 1989 by clySmic software. All rights reserved. I. INTRODUCTION This program allows VGA (PS/2 Model 50, 60 or 80), Display Adapter/2, BIOS or register compatible VGA clone, or MCGA (PS/2 Model 25 or 30) users to: ž View the quarter-million color palette they've been hearing about, ž Set any text-mode attribute (0 - 15) to any color, ž Control the overscan (a.k.a. border) color (not available on MCGA systems), ž Have the colors "stick" with most programs, ž Load and save their favorite settings in color files, and ž Use the program in a command-line mode. See the end of this document for an important upgrade offer. II. FILES INCLUDED ž VPT.EXE................The VGA/MCGA Palette Tool. ž VPT.MAN................This documentation. ž LOCK.COM...............A small TSR that locks EGA and VGA palette registers (optional). ž SEL.EXE................An ANSI color setting program. ž TSTPATN.EXE............A television test pattern to judge colors with. III. INTERACTIVE MODE Command: VPT VPT operates in text mode and allows setting of any or all of the sixteen attributes available in text mode. There are three sliders (one each for Red, Green, and Blue), each of which can assume any of 64 values (0 through 63). The current values are displayed next to the sliders on the right side of the screen. Key(s) Action ----------------- ---------------------------------------- Left/Right Arrows Moves the R,G, or B slider between 0 and 63 to control the intensity of the R, G, or B signal. Control Left/Right As above, but moves five positions instead of one. PageUp/PageDown Selects an attribute between 0 and 15 to work with. A Shows licensing information About VPT. B Backdrop mode. This makes the current attribute the background and places text with all sixteen attributes on the screen so you can see the combinations. Any key exits this mode. D Loads the Default, boot-up colors. L Loads the colors from a file of your choice, if no file is specified, STD.VPT is assumed. You don't need to add the .VPT extension. O Sets the Overscan (border) color to the current attribute. Not available on MCGA systems. S Saves the colors to a file of your choice, if no file is specified, STD.VPT is assumed. Note: all .VPT files are saved to the directory VPT is found in, NOT the current directory (unless VPT.EXE is there!) T Automatically loads the sTandard color file, STD.VPT. This is the same as Loading it, its just easier. End Exits VPT. Keys Used While Loading or Saving a File: Backspace Erases the last character in the file name. Ctrl-Backspace Erases all the characters in the file name. IV. COMMAND-LINE MODE Command: VPT [option] Where [option] is one of the following (capitalization does not matter): /L[filename] This loads the specified file, if there is one. If there isn't, you will get an error message. If [filename] is not specified, STD.VPT will be assumed. /C[filename] Like /L above, but does an ANSI clear screen afterwards and displays no messages. /D This loads the default palette. These are the colors assigned by IBM and are the ones you would see if you didn't use VPT. /X This resets the "palette load on mode change" option to true (see TECHNICAL INFORMATION, below, for an explanation). /? Presents a help list recapping your options. Any other option will generate an error message. The main reason for command-line mode is to include VPT in batch files. First you would run VPT interactively, find the colors you like, save them in the STD.VPT file, then include a line like the following: VPT /L in your batch file. This will load your saved colors when you run the batch file. VPT.EXE should be placed in a directory on your PATH. If you don't wish to see the informational messages produced by VPT in command-line mode, you can redirect the output to the null device (a.k.a. the bit bucket) as follows: VPT /L >NUL: Note that error messages *cannot* be redirected and will still be seen. If there are any errors, the DOS ERRORLEVEL is set to 10. V. MORE EXAMPLES VPT /L123PAL Loads the color file 123PAL.VPT. This assumes you created such a file using the interactive mode of VPT. VPT /C Loads STD.VPT and clears the screen. VPT /? Brings forth help. VI. TECHNICAL INFORMATION ž GENERAL VPT works by making BIOS calls that manipulate the DAC (digital to analog converter) color registers; each register (there are 256, to allow for the 300x200x256 mode) contains 18 bits, 6 each for Red, Green, and Blue. Each RGB value can go from 0 to 63, all the combinations makes for 262,144 possible colors. You can show up to sixteen of these at a time in the text modes, each of the sixteen "attributes" can be any color (or all the same color) out of the quarter-million. ž MODE SETS Normally BIOS resets the EGA and DAC color registers whenever a mode set is done. VPT makes its colors stick across a mode change by using the "Default Palette Loading During Mode Set" BIOS call to disable this action. If, for some reason, you desire to return this to its default, boot-up condition, use VPT /X. Then a subsequent mode change, like MODE CO80, will cause the default conditions to prevail. ž REGISTERS, REGISTERS EVERYWHERE ON the VGA, the DAC color registers are mapped through the EGA palette registers, so, for instance, the attribute "Brown" (6) maps to the color $14 on an EGA (out of its 64 possible colors); on the VGA, DAC color register $14 contains $2A,$15,$00 for the R, G, and B values (these are all default values). In order to not to be foiled by EGA-aware programs, VPT resets the EGA palette registers to their default values each time it is run. If a program remaps the EGA registers, and then counts on a mode set to return them to normal when it exits, the registers will *stay* remapped because of the disabling of the "palette load on mode set". Simply type VPT /C (for instance) and it will remap the EGA registers to their default values. Note that EGA-aware programs will still use their own colors while the program is running, VPT doesn't prevent that. The MCGA has no EGA registers, so the DAC registers are set directly from the color attribute. ž COLOR FILES The saved color files have an extension of .VPT which you NEVER need to type when using VPT. For DOS 3.x users, they are stored in the same directory that VPT is run from. For instance, say VPT is stored in the C:\BIN directory, that directory is on your PATH, and you are in C:\ZUUL. The color file will be stored in C:\BIN. For DOS 2.x users, the file will be stored in the root directory. DOS 1.x users are quite out of luck, why would one have advanced video but DOS 1.x anyway? VPT attempts to check for a valid color file by not loading any files that aren't exactly 49 bytes long. You will get a 'bad color file' message. If a file is 49 bytes long and has a .VPT extension but *isn't* a VPT color file, it will get loaded anyway. The colors should be interesting. ž REFERENCES VPT was written based on technical information from the book "Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems" by Richard Wilton and IBM's Display Adapter/2 Technical Reference. VII. CAVEATS EGA-aware and VGA-aware programs still will run with their own colors, all (okay, almost all, who knows what's out there?) other programs will use the colors VPT sets. VPT uses only BIOS calls and should run on the BIOS or register compatible VGA clones that are now just becoming available; however, the pseudo-VGAs (really EGAs with 640x480 mode) won't run it - they still have only 64 colors total (and will cause grief down the road for their buyers, I suspect). The author welcomes any VGA clone test results. VIII. OTHER INCLUDED PROGRAMS ž LOCK.COM If you want to "lock" the colors you set against any EGA/VGA-aware programs that try to change them using BIOS, set your colors, then run the TSR program LOCK.COM included in this package. This program can be removed and re-run by using a TSR control package like TurboPower's excellent MARK and RELEASE (available on CompuServe and probably everywhere else). Note: VPT will not be able to reset your colors after LOCK is run. To reset them, remove LOCK, reset, then run LOCK again. ž TSTPATN.EXE This is a silly program that displays a test pattern to see what various colors look like with lots of text and various lines on the screen. Also great for leaving on your screen all night. This program takes its colors from the DOS screen colors when its invoked. Works best if you use something like ANSI.SYS or have LightGray and Black re-mapped to different colors. ž SEL.EXE A small ANSI color selector for those who use ANSI.SYS or a similar ANSI screen driver. Allows easy color selection using the BIOS/BASIC color numbering scheme instead of the ANSI color numbers. Type SEL /? for instructions. IX. ENHANCED VERSION There is a commercial, non-shareware version of VPT available direct from clySmic - VPT 4.10. Here are some of VPT 4.10's features: 1. Much faster color loading, due to direct access to the DAC registers, rather than going through the BIOS. The BIOS calls are either slow or cause severe flickering. 2. A completely new and improved method to get the colors to "stick" for all programs. This involves a very small (0.8K) terminate-and-stay-resident program called VPTRES. MCGA users and those who don't want a TSR program resident can still use VPT 4.10 in the old manner, without VPTRES. It is highly recommended though as an improved way of controlling colors. It solves the problem of exiting from an application that uses EGA colors and/or graphics. In the past you had to re-run VPT to restore normal colors. Now VPTRES takes care of all that automatically! 3. During color file loading you can press F1 for a list of all available .VPT color files in the directory that VPT was run from. No more having to remember what name you gave to a .VPT color file! You can easily scroll back and forth through this list and select a file for loading with one key. 4. Home and End now adjust the color of the slider you're working on, Home for 0 and End for 63. X or Escape is now used to exit VPT. 5. Built-in integrity checking. This option allows you to run an integrity check on VPT.EXE to make sure it hasn't been corrupted for by a virus or a disk/software failure. Be safe! VPT 4.10 can be ordered by sending $20.00 to clySmic software, our address is below. Please make checks or money orders payable to Ralph B. Smith Jr. X. ALL THAT LEGAL BROUHAHA VPT is copyrighted by clySmic software, and is released as Shareware. It is requested that if you find this program useful, that you send clySmic software $20.00 as a user fee FOR EACH MACHINE USED. You may copy this program and distribute it without charge for non- commercial, non-governmental use. You may not sell or otherwise charge for VPT. However, users' groups may charge a small fee (not to exceed $7) for media and postage. Commercial and governmental users are REQUIRED to pay the user fee. Please be certain that all files are kept together. This program is provided AS IS without any warranty, expressed or implied, including but not limited to fitness for a particular purpose. So there. clySmic software is not responsible for anything that may happen when you use VPT, including hardware damage or information loss. Please make checks or money orders payable to Ralph B Smith Jr. Payments may be sent to: Ralph B Smith Jr clySmic software P. O. Box 2271 Empire State Plaza Albany, NY 12220 Thank you. This will allow more improvements to VPT, and will allow other products to come your way. -- Ralph Smith President, clySmic software CompuServe No. 76156,164