Runstream (R) XGA 256 colors /XGA-2 64k colors Windows 95/98 Driver Copyright (C) Unal Z, 2006 for Runstream & PS/2 MCABASE ------------------------------------------------------------------- Beta Test XGA206 unalz@mail333.com This document complements the installation instructions and presents the history of the driver along with authentic test reports. The driver installation procedure is described in INSTALL.TXT. Driver updates and information at http://www.members.aon.at/mcabase CONTENTS 1. Before You Start Multiple XGA/XGA-2 Adapters Resolutions and Monitor Specs 2. Installation Problems and Solutions INF File Cleanup Display Problems 3. History of the Driver 4. Test Reports Jim Shorney Peter Wendt William Walsh Daniel Hamilton Louis Ohland Jelte W. Roelfsema 1. BEFORE YOU START You need a MicroChannel machine with an XGA or XGA-2 display adapter and the Windows 95/98 operating system. The XGA206 driver is an UPDATE of the Windows XGA driver. You must have the Windows 95/98 XGA driver installed before you update it with XGA206. If you have not defined a monitor type or your monitor is unsupported, try using the standard VESA DDC or Super VGA monitor type. Unpack the contents of XGA206.ZIP in a directory or on a diskette. You should have the following files: INSTALL TXT -- Installation instructions README TXT -- This file XGA2 VXD -- 32-bit Virtual Device Driver XGA2 DRV -- 16/32-bit Device Driver XGA206 INF -- Windows driver installation INF file To differentiate between the Windows XGA driver and the XGA206 driver, the installable display types have been defined as: "IBM XGA MCA" -- IBM XGA Display Adapter with the XGA206 driver. "IBM XGA-2 MCA" -- IBM XGA-2 Display Adapter with the XGA206 driver. The built-in Windows driver defines the XGA and XGA-2 display types as "IBM XGA" and "IBM XGA-2". MULTIPLE XGA/XGA-2 ADAPTERS If you have multiple XGA or XGA-2 adapters, only one adapter will be supported. The adapter selection rules are as follows: * Planar XGA-2 and one XGA/XGA-2 display adapter in an extension slot. Planar XGA-2 will be disabled and the XGA or XGA-2 adapter in extension slot used. * Planar XGA-2 and multiple XGA/XGA-2 display adapters in extension slots. Planar XGA-2 will be disabled and the XGA or XGA-2 adapter in the LOWEST numbered extension slot used. * Multiple XGA/XGA-2 display adapters in extension slots. The XGA or XGA-2 adapter in the LOWEST numbered extension slot will be used. The Windows XGA driver uses identical adapter selection rules. RESOLUTIONS AND MONITOR SPECS The XGA-2 Display Adapter is a highly programmable device. Extended XGA video modes, that is, resolutions and color depths are programmed and not contained in adapter's BIOS. The XGA206 driver uses pre-selected mode settings which require the use of assumed monitor specs. This is different than the Display Mode Query and Set (DMQS) mode of operation. See in the XGA-2 table below if your monitor supports the expected line frequency. For the ease of use, DMQS Monitor IDs have been also given. XGA-2 ------------------------------------------------------------- Resolution BPP Frame Line PEL DMQS Pixels Bits Hz kHz MHz ID Monitor ------------------------------------------------------------------- 640x480 8, 16 60 31.6 25.25 5FF5 14" Generic 640x480 * 8, 16 72 37.9 31.50 95F9 14" Generic 640x480 8, 16 75 39.4 31.50 9955 14" Generic 800x600 ** 8, 16 60 37.9 40 9955 14" Generic 800x600 * 8 72 48.1 50 F5FF 16" Generic 800x600 16 72 45.4 45 1102 IBM 6325 (15V), 9525 (15P) 800x600 8 75 50.0 52 9999 14" Generic 800x600 16 75 46.9 45 0302 Sony GDM-2036S 1024x768 ** 8 60 48.4 65 F5FF 16" Generic 1024x768 * 8 70 56.5 75 9955 14" Generic 1024x768 8 72 58.1 79 99F0 IBM 9517 1024x768 8 75 61.1 86 F9FF IBM 9515 1280x1024 4 53 I 58.1 106 -- Interlaced -------------------------------------------------------------------- * = Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) Standard ** = VESA Guideline I = Interlaced The use of different line rates for 16-bpp in 800x600 at 72 Hz and 75 Hz, is a technical necessity dictated by the limitation of the programmable pixel rate of the XGA-2 to 90 Mhz. The table below lists the XGA modes and used line rates: XGA --------------------------------------------------------------- Resolution BPP Frame Line PEL Pixels Bits Hz kHz MHz ------------------------------------------------------------------- 640x480 8, 16 60 31.4 25.25 1024x768 8 43.5 I 35.4 45 ------------------------------------------------------------------- I = Interlaced 2. INSTALLATION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS The tips presented in this section are intended for advanced users for the duration of the initial test phase. INF FILE CLEANUP If you are reinstalling the XGA206 driver and wish to to get rid of previous XGA206 driver traces, you can delete the following two files from the C:\WINDOWS\INF directory: DRVIDX.BIN -- These will be rebuilt by Windows DRVDATA.BIN when you install a driver. OEMn.INF -- See following note. The XGA06 INF files are copied to C:\WINDOWS\INF as OEMn.INF where n denotes a number. You can safely delete these files if you are reinstalling the driver. Make sure you remove XGA206 INF files, check first the contents of each OEMn.INF before you delete it. On the later Windows versions, for example, Windows 95C (OSR2), and Windows 98 or Windows 98SE, look for the file MCABaseXGA206.INF in the directory C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER. The subdirectory INF is a hidden directory and may not be visible with the default settings of the Explorer. (Suggested by Peter Wendt / Windows 95C, OSR2). DISPLAY PROBLEMS If you are experience problems with your current settings display settings and are unable to change or restore them, start Windows in safe mode and apply the display mode changes: Reboot or restart Windows. Upon seeing the line "Windows 95 is loading...." press F8. Select option 3 from the menu, Safe mode. Start the "Display" applet program. Select the desired color depth or resolution. Restart Windows. You can use the described procedure to reinstall the XGA206 driver or the Windows XGA driver. 3. HISTORY OF THE DRIVER XGA206 is an acronym for XGA/XGA-2 Display Driver 2006. The driver is based on a code published by Microsoft Corp. in the Windows 95 DDK. You can read the code in the MSDN Subscription Collection 1995-1996. The idea of adapting the driver to support 16-bpp at 800x600 originated years earlier as I was reading the DDK code. The decisive push to start and supply the desired support rewrite part for it came during a discussion in comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware about MicroChannel adapters in Windows 98SE. The history of this newsgroup discussion is well documented in the thread WIN98SE MCA ADAPTERS started on March 24, 2006. Driver development work has been kindly sponsored by Charles Lasitter and compensation for efforts donated to Doctors Without Borders, sincere thanks. Driver testing has been done by the members of comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware. I'd like to express my sincere thanks to all testers for their invaluable work and reported problems. Test reports are included in the next section of this document. The excerpts below from the discussion in WIN98SE MCA ADAPTERS highlight some of the interesting moments in the development phase. In less than a month, first driver builds managed the 64K colors at 800x600 and beta tests started. The quoted texts have been partly edited for brevity. UNAL Z (March 26, 2006) Implanting that portion ... into the driver for mode 114 would give 800x600x64K color packed pixel mode at low 60Hz Vertical Refresh. Not much motivating those 60Hz but it would be a good experiment. CHARLES LASITTER (March 26, 2006) > Very interesting. I always thought that high color 800x600 on an XGA2 > would be the bees knees. Assuming no hidden traps, it is just about defining the VESA Mode 114h Table and a few more fixes. > Too bad about the 60Hz UNAL Z (April 7, 2006) Inserting and enabling the mode (800x600 @ 16-bpp) in the driver is the easiest part, propagating the 16 bpp (64K colors) changes is the most time consuming part. Now I have a pretty good picture on what is going on, and that picture gets increasingly brighter. XGA-2 16-bpp operations must be implemented, many ASM modules will be touched by this. LOUIS OHLAND (April 9-10, 2006) > UZ, do you have a copy of "Power Programming... the IBM XGA" .... > UZ, you didn't respond to my triple secret query on those two books. > What do you wandt me to do? Entertain me ?? Programming is a lonely job. Thanks, no books right now, the techref is exciting and comprehensive enough, I saw the divine blue light... UNAL Z (April 13, 2006) You see, I am searching for a 45 Mhz PEL rate with at least a 72 Hz refresh rate at 800x600. UNAL Z (April 14, 2006) The Win driver does not strictly follow the order of register writes at setting an extended mode as outlined in the techref. That works obviously but may cause spurious data at changing a mode. I'd like to stay clean and strictly follow the big blue order, so I am separating (1) DMQS file mode data, (2) bits-per-pixel settings and (3) common sprite regs writes. The side effect is less individual mode bytes by using common parts, and less driver bytes. UNAL Z (April 19, 2006) XGA.VXD done, now moving to the VGA parts and approaching the grand finale. As it is, I end up reworking the complete VXD. From the 3000 lines of assembly code (inc. comments and white space), about 1000 deal with the initial setup, card detection and card configuration. This part I left largely untouched. From the rest 2000 lines, about 2/3 have been completely revised and 1/3 rewritten. The VXD became by 1300 bytes smaller than the original driver and contains at the same time more mode tables and more resolutions. Clean and lean ! CHARLES LASITTER (April 19, 2006) I'm amazed at how quickly you're going thru this. Are you the last person on the planet that knows how to code in assembly? It breaks my heart that we couldn't have got onto this project some years ago. Suffering while Win95 apps fought over a 256 color pallet is one of the things I think lead to the early demise of many fine machines. UNAL Z (April 20, 2006) XGA.DRV done too, 16-bpp enabled, cut the ribbon. Coding is finished, testing must start now. I hope it works, but if not, we'll make it work. UNAL Z (April 21, 2006) Oooh, so many colors, so fast changing... I can't count them all. IT WORKS !!! Kindly sponsored by Mr Charles Lasitter, sincere thanks. Charles Lasitter deserves a big credit for the realization of the driver, I probably wouldn't have done it in absence of interest. His genuine concern showed up at the right moment CHARLES LASITTER (April 24, 2006) UZnal has refused compensation for his efforts, and so I have made an initial contribution to Doctors Without Borders in his honor. Salute, UZnal! UNAL Z (April 23, 2006) * We have 75 Hz refresh at 800x600 with 16-bpp, fantastic. * 50 Mhz pixel rate at 16-bpp corrupted the display. This special test version of the driver is NOT included in the zip, so you won't be burning your XGA-2. * 16-bpp obviously doubles the XGA-2 pixel rate. My formula is Effective-Pixel-Rate = ( bits-per-pixel / 8 ) * Used-Pixel-Rate where the Effective-Pixel-Rate should be less than or equal to 90 Mhz. JIM SHORNEY (April 23, 2006) Looks great so far, Unal. Nice work! I'll let the Pipes screen saver beat it up for a few hours (wow, a transition from Teal to faded Lavender .. cool!). Kelly green, bright red, shadows and shades, very nice. UNAL Z (April 24, 2006) The XGA-2 color quality is indeed fine, and I dare say, now even better than in OS/2. Why? This driver supplies 16-bpp at 800x600 with 75 Hz unchanged on every monitor that can support the line frequency of 46.9 kHz. No DMQS dependency where IBM claimed the highest refresh were 60 Hz at 16-bpp and enforced it in the DMQS settings, just to stay VESA compliant with the VESA line freqs (at 75 Hz and 8-bpp, this results in 50 Mhz pixel rate, XGA-2 can't do that with 16-bpp). The 60Hz deliver inferior display quality. We will have time to draw more conclusions, keep on counting the colors UNAL Z (April 30, 2006) Gentlemen, we have a new XGA-2 driver. Fully operational. Cut the cake! April 30, 2006: www.members.aon.at/mcabase/pub/files/xga206.zip No more pink, no more corrupted 16-color modes. Two new 16-color modes, 800x600 and 1280x1204, both unsupported by the original Windows driver. 1280x1204x4 is interlaced at 53 Hz with 58.1 kHz line rate and 106 Mhz pixel rate, the settings being those of the IBM 9517, IBM 9521 (M-1105) monitor. Despite the interlaced mode, it looks pretty fine. UNAL Z (April 30, 2006) The XGA misery with 64K is the non-programmable pixel clock, it is fixed at 45 Mhz. The techref supplies mode set tables for the XGA registers only for 640x480 and 1024x768. These are not identical to the XGA-2 tables. What best refresh rate can you get out of 45 Mhz pixel rate? I am not that optimistic. Instead, it would be wiser to put the efforts to accelerate the XGA-2 with additional coprocessor operations, because the card itself is indeed fast enough. UNAL Z (April 30, 2006) > Well done, UZ! Your efforts are very much appreciated! Thank you! All test efforts are highly appreciated as well! A sad affair, actually. Why have we been deprived of it for so long? It took one Windows-95-driver-untrained person less than 4 weeks of part time to accomplish it. Without the resources of IBM/M$. An engineer with display driver experience could have done it in a shorter time. This driver is coming possibly years too late. Better late then never? CHARLES LASITTER (April 30, 2006) Think of all the thousands of tons of PS/2 computers that hit the landfills around the world for want of this device driver. And all because IBM/M$ couldn't be bothered to spend a few hundred dollars of effort to keep machines relevant to the dominant OS. We don't hesitate to require cradle-to-grave responsibility for makers of such electronics nowadays, but because we couldn't see the value in a driver to keep the computers relevant ... How do we simplify this issue so that public policy makers can understand it? UNAL Z (May 17, 2006) One MB of video RAM is sufficient for 24-bit colors at 640x480. I branched XGA206 and tried a few combinations with the "reserved" PEL size bits. Win95 switched to it, but all I got from the XGA-2 was a white mouse pointer on a black screen. No colors. It's fun to try to shut down the system with a black screen, you click and listen to the disk. 800x600 on XGA results in corrupted screen. The 45 Mhz pixel rate is probably tied to the 35.4 kHz line rate to provide the 43.5 Hz interlaced 1024x768 mode. I tried 800x600 with 36 Mhz pixel rate and 35.4 kHz line rate, screen corrupted. A solution could be to adapt the timings of 1024x768, but that calls for much time to experiment. 4. TEST REPORTS Following are excerpted impressions from the original test reports, lighlty edited for brevity. Reports are chronologically ordered. JIM SHORNEY (April 23-24, 2006) For reference, this is a DX2-66 Ultimedia Bermuda, 16 MB RAM, heatsinked XGA-2, ActionMedia II and ACPA installed but no drivers. The Ultimedia Bermuda has Win95B. Backed up the registry with ERU and away we go... The driver installation proceeded as described with no hitches. Restart OK, no reg errors. On selecting 16bpp color, things immediately got strange. After a cold reboot, everything looks fine. OK after a warm reboot too. No signs yet of strangeness or corruption. The moral of the story, always restart after changing color depth. This machine had Gateway Crystal Scan 1572 monitor selected. It works. It looks DAMN nice on a Sony 100GS Trinitron monitor. UNAL Z (April 24, 2006) Jim [Shorney], you deserve a big, big credit for your tests. They assured me that the problem is in Windows and not the driver, and indeed I FIXED the registry errors. Thank you ! PETER WENDT (April 25, 2006) I tried out my trusty old 9556-0BA with the onboard-XGA2 (Win95C with TR-Network and ACPA sounddriver) and connected it to the 19" ColorTac LCD. Install went fine so far. Since a reboot is always recommended after driver install I restarted the system. No serious initial problems on re-entering W95, but the display disliked the refresh and screen control signals. Changing refresh "on the fly" ended with a very nasty exception error and a blue screen. Restarted the system, 800x600 Hi-Color mode and changed the display to "IBM 6314", which is a sort-of multimode screen, which does 60Hz on most modes. Voila here we are. Stable picture in Hi-Color in between the screen borders. (I tried to run the very same driver on the 9533 PS/2e before ... ISA-XGA2. Well ... of course it crashed and did not work. I think the problem is false ressources. The ISA adapter uses different Base-I/O adresses and I guess these are not that easy to query.) JIM SHORNEY (April 26, 2006) I didn't mention that I had the same effect Peter [Wendt] found, of the image being somewhat up and to the left at first. Didn't think anything of it, this is not uncommon when changing video drivers or hardware. I just adjusted the monitor. WILLIAM WALSH (April 26-28, 2006) Tonight, in the middle of the (so-far empty, but the farmers are coming out to work their fields) quiet cornfields of Central Illinois, there will be two XGA-2 cards coming up in brilliant high color at 800x600 under Win95. I don't care what else might need to be done--short of anything falling down, it can happen later. I decided to use a "sacrificial" 9595-0LG for the test. This machine is running Win95 OSR 2.5. I started by changing everything back to standard VGA, 640x480. For a monitor, I picked the IBM G50...it was closest to what I had attached. Loaded the driver per the instructions provided in the readme...that part worked great. Rebooted. Windows comes up with the blue "setup" wallpaper--only it is pink! Once I got past the logon dialog, this corrected itself and the wallpaper turned the proper color. No big deal...go into display properties, settings tab...and uh-oh! The registry is corrupt, or so says Windows. Okay, follow the instructions for setting the swapfile...I too picked 100MB as the top limit, and 0 as the bottom. No improvement upon rebooting. Windows still says the registry is corrupt. Trying to jump directly to 800x600x64K colors results in a "you need to restart your computer" message. Letting the computer restart brings things up in 640x480x256 colors. I reverted completely back to the Microsoft-supplied IBM XGA-2 driver. Upon rebooting, there were no registry errors of any sort displayed. I downloaded your latest revision to a floppy and tried again at setting things up. The only difference now being that...everything works. I've got a brilliant 800x600 display at 64K colors. Windows and the display properties window are perfectly stable--I've been running it for a while now, doing everything I could think of at the time. Nothing seems to be throwing any problems--even switching to and from a full screen command line within Windows works, whereas before it would cause a total lockup. I've also seen no problems with odd colors at startup. UNAL Z (April 30, 2006) Gentlemen, we have a new XGA-2 driver. Fully operational. Cut the cake! April 30, 2006: www.members.aon.at/mcabase/pub/files/xga206.zip QA-Department / Test Crew: Please validate mode selection (all modes are selectable) and eventual registry errors on install. Take a look at 1280x1024. When you keep the color depth unchnanged and change only the resolution, you won't need to reboot. Reboot perhaps on color depth change, depends on Windows. JIM SHORNEY (April 30, 2006) Sunday morning playtime again. The Ultimedia has been running continuously for the last week without a glitch. Switching in and out of fullscreen DOS prompt OK, shutdwon/restart OK, anything else I can think of seems to work. Response is very good, limited by hard disk swapping. I installed the above driver set a few minutes ago without problems, and all seems to be working as before. PETER WENDT (April 30, 2006) When I returned from Ankes aunts birthday "party" (or whatever I should call that: many meals included) I needed to feed my mind a bit too and downloaded the new version. Tests haven't yet fully finished, but it works as good as the previous. Some remark (again) on my "mode of operation": - before trying out a new driver I return to "Standard VGA" mode - do a reboot - kill off the two files DRVIDX.BIN and DRVDATA.BIN - delete the MCABaseXGA206.INF - I however keep the 6314 screen setting, since it allowes to select between 60, 72 and 75 Hz along with "Standard" and "Optimal" settings. Then I install the new drivers and do a reboot (as asked). On change from 640x480 / 256 colors to 800x600 / 64K colors the screen turns "crying green" with pinkish window background and the mouse actions leave a trail of mouse cursor icons, when I select "Change mode without restart". A fullscreen DOS-screen does not fix it - you really need a restart (reboot or "Shutdown to DOS" and Exit) The 1024x768 mode works, the 1280x1024 ends in an "No Supported" display on the ColorTac 19" LCD, but that won't surprise me much. This then requires to start Win95 up in "Safe Mode" and set the screen resolution back to 800x600 with appropriate refresh. No way to go back otherwise, since the LCD stays totally blank (except you know *exactly* all the pushbuttons and the way to reach them via keyboard blindly) Next I'm going to try out the PS/2e with the new set of drivers. COFFEE BREAK or CSIPH NOISES > Fleshtones are very nice.... :) Mmmm... You've deciphered XGA-2-0-6...;) > Uh-oh. I'd often wondered about that 206-number... Room number .... :) ? > Hard to beat on the naturality side ... :-) Hey, you all make me realy curious now... DANIEL HAMILTON (May 2, 2006) I've installed XGA206 on my 8590, and works without a hitch, this is the configuration: Machine : 8590 OS : Windows 98 SE Processor : P90 Type 4 Memory : 64MB SCSI : Spock (Slot 1) Display : XGA/2 (Slot 2) Network : 3COM 3C589 (Slot 3) Hard Disk : 540 MB SCSI CD-ROM : IBM CD-ROM II Started with a clean disk. Copied the CABS off the CD onto the HDD. Ran setup without any special switches. After a good wait, it finally rebooted into Windows. Default display driver ran 640x480x256. I upped it to 640x480x64K, success. Then I downloaded XGA206 driver onto a floppy and installed it via the Display Properties dialog. Selected 640x480x64K resolution, it asked to restart and so I let it. Restarted, display did a big "Dong" as if it had just been turned on. It then gleefully showed me my network login. IE shows colorful web pages, 3D screen savers work great, no problems. No display corruption noted so far. I have to say this is by far the coolest thing I've seen. Perhaps this can spur a whole new wave of software development for these PS/2s? As an addendum, 800x600x64K works great as well! LOUIS OHLAND (May 3, 2006) Tried XGA206 for the planar XGA, and descended into driver hell. I tried to uninstall the XGA, install plain VGA, then try the XGA206. Who needs mary-juh-wanna when you have Windows 98SE? Troubles started instantly upon trying to install VGA. The XGA206 seems to only support 16 colors at this time. Moral of the story is stick with the stock W98SE XGA driver. It may not be fleshy, but 640x480x64K is OK, even at 60Hz. UNAL Z (May 3, 2006) Did you perhaps install XGA206 on VGA? You start with an existing installation and update the driver. As a matter of fact, you have to start it this way to let Windows insert the XGA/XGA-2 PNP stuff in the registry. We keep the hardware device and only update its driver. That is the difference, we UPDATE only. LOUIS OHLAND (May 3, 2006) Applied your 3 May version to XGA [1MB] in my Model 90. Installed smoothly. The color/resolutions were correct, 16/256/64K at 640x480 and 16/256 at 1024x768. Choose 64K/640x480, allowed system to reboot. System comes up with Problem with display settings. Adapter type is incorrect or the current settings do not work with your hardware. Then tried 16/640x480. Black screen "Windows Protection Error" and I have to CAD. I try safe mode, open display properties, and wa-la, (Unknown Monitor) on (Unknown Device) It keeps asking for me to set the display adapter, I hit apply, reboot, and it's right back to wanting me to change my settings. I tried it again, made sure I hit "Apply" before it asked me to reboot. Lots of disk thrashing when it restarted, sounded like an angry bee in my drive. Constant seeks. Eventually, after about a minute, the seeks stopped and W98SE loaded. Adapter was still not configured how 98SE thought it should be. UNAL Z (May 3, 2006) The status of the XGA side is set to "PARTLY OPERATIONAL" until more XGA tests are published. We have too little info about the XGA behaviour of the driver. WILLIAM WALSH (May 5, 2006) I finally got around to loading UZ's improved XGA-2 driver onto an Ultimedia Model 77 with Win95 (original release). This machine still has almost all of its original hardware in place and a NEC Multisync 3FGe as the monitor of choice. What else can I say - it works beautifully! How nice it is to be able to kick it up into high color and browse the web, switch windows, etc without all those annoying palette shifts. The picture is sharp, bright and very well focused. LOUIS OHLAND (May 5, 2006) UZ, it's a wicked brew. Installed 4 May build over existing [and working!] M$ XGA driver. Install proceeded nicely, chose 16 colors at 640x480. Monitor was IBM 9525 (15P). Restarted. Came up, acted normal. Took it down, rebooted, and no errors. Decent to hell. Wendt to display properties, settings, chose 256 colors 640x480, system whipped up a notice to restart, perhaps I should have stiff-armed it by saying No, then apply, close... Restarted. Windows Protection Error. Safe mode does not allow me to set adapter [you're in safe mode! but I don't feel too damn secure!]. I fall back to the bunkers and call for fire on myself [drop your ordnance on my location!]. Restart, I slip into SP, set XGA Vid ROM to C000-C1FF [tiptoe boys production!], reboot to W98. No joy, Red X. Hardware problem. I fight my way into System, XGA has a yellow "!", yet there are _no_ resource conflicts. Settings are the same as above. Error 23 (0x17) The problem is with the main display adapter. Fix the main display adapter, and then this display adapter will work. UZ, I swear on a pallet of classic Jolt that the only video adapter in this system is the planar XGA. UNAL Z (May 5-7, 2006) It's getting increasingly painful to try to fix it this way, which is not the right way to do it. "Years of academy training wasted...." would have Buzz Lightyear said. Without an XGA adapter at the production site, this show of trial and error can go on longer. That must change. > Do you need a 1-meg XGA card for anything you're doing? Or some ZIPPs > to populate an existing XGA card to 1-meg, or 8590/9590 up to 1-meg? No XGA around me, and I am trying to fix a driver ...:) Ideally, I need a 1 MB XGA which I must be able to downgrade to 512 KB. Both memory sizes must be tested. Only for the duration of the test + experimentation period. > So you have an 8590/9590 w/XGA-2 and 512k XGA on the planar. No, I don't have any 8590/9590, and only XGA-2s in the other machines. JWR (Jelte W. Roelfsema) kindly offered to send the XGA, and I accepted. JELTE W. ROELFSEMA (JWR) (May 10, 2006) Here are the first test results from Holland! Testset: Mod 90 9590-ALA, 8*8 MB ECC, Type 3 -xMx DX-50 256KB L2 cache. Planar XGA Display IBM 6546 W98SE 4.10.2222A Upon installing W98SE recognised and installed XGA correctly. Installed XGA206; please restart the system; ok; system closes down, tries to restart, but "general protection error"! Powered off; and on again; got the menu (safe mode pre-selected); selected normal instead; system came up without a hitch in 640x480x16. Suddenly desktop-icons turn black when double-clicked. System feels unstable. I try to go into Systems, but "error in desk.cpl" and exit. Try to start Explorer: "Error starting explorer" and exit. Start, exit, restart: system closes down, tries to restart, but "general protection error"! Powered off; and on again; got the menu (safe mode pre-selected); selected normal instead and suddenly a full, slow memcount occurs (I normally have a fast check). But system starts up fine otherwise in 640x480x16. Trying to change into anything other than 640x480x16 triggers a restart , followed by a "general protection error" upon restarting. So, not a very great succes. Deleted the following: INF/OTHER/MCABaseXGA206.inf INF/drvdata.bin INF/drvidx/bin INF/msdisp.pnf SYSTEM/XGA2.vxd SYSTEM/XGA2.drv Re-installed the stock-XGA driver and all seems fine now. UNAL Z (May 10, 2006) The video quality of the XGA is great, it surprised me. It is even better than XGA-2 in VGA modes. Back then, monitors were not as good as now, so a strong and powerful video signal promised a quality. Indeed, we owe something to this great card, though the interlaced mode and the lowly 60 Hz are technically hardly justifiable. I tested today in the evening with the build from May 7, 2006 and JWR's XGA in Mod. 77 / Bermuda, however, without any protection errors. So much for the good news. No exceptions or protection errors here, but also no expected results. Display modes can be selected, the colors depth + resolution combinations work, but a selected mode cannot be set. XGA still has some problem there in 206. UNAL Z (May 10, 2006) Honey, I swapped the flags... First I swapped the VXDs, took the original VXD and paired it with the DRV of the 206. Fantastic, no problems, an XGA was born. Then I flagged the VXD of 206 to be only XGA-2 and let it roll so over the XGA. What do you think happened ...? The XGA entered 640x480 with 256 colors as if nothing happened. Mind you, these were the mode set tables of the XGA-2 !!! JELTE W. ROELFSEMA (JWR) (May 13, 2006) Started off with a clean install with the stock XGA1 at 640x480x16 color. Following install.txt, I installed the XGA2XGA drivers. Pressed OK....Please restart the system...No, in stead I shut it down completely to avoid possible GPF's. After restart system comes up in 640x480x256 as expected. Tried the Nokia monitor test; splashscreen looks great for a short time, then changes (??) to something horrible. Test comes up and shows 256 colors. Switched back and forth between 256 and hi without restarts...no problems. Nokia shows hi colors; splashscreen looks great! Tried .avi an .mpg movies : pretty smooth in hi-color. Not so smooth in 256 color, funny enough. I'd expect it the other way around, but who's complaining?? UNAL Z (May 14, 2006) FIXED THE BEAST ........!! XGA is FULLY operational (Louis, are you listening?). WILLIAM WALSH (June 23, 2006) I set out to try and find out if UZ's XGA-206 driver would work on the 9533 PS/2 "E" running Win95. Windows 95 setup completed in about 40 minutes (I was impressed!) and the only sign of potential trouble was detection of a "standard VGA" display controller instead of the planar XGA-2. Windows booted smoothly. With a little diddling, XGA-2 came up with the M$ driver, as did the IDE and PCMCIA adapter. With Windows working nicely, I installed the XGA-206 drivers and rebooted. Suffice it to say, it works quite well... the machine is across the room, running 800x600 at 16-bit color with a 75Hz vertical refresh rate and a Dell 17" CRT. The picture is very stable, sharp and full of brilliant colors. Your mileage may vary. All I can say is that the allegedly ISA XGA-2 on the 9533 is working fine with UZ's driver. END.Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.