VGATV for DOS driver
On version (99.187): - Thanks to Den from Russia, mode 13h (320x200x256 colors) is now fully working on the Trident 8900/9000i cards. No more palette breaking. This had, however, implications on text mode, but I managed that. This also works only in 320x200. Other screen widths aren't supported (deliberately), so if you get a non-standard mode with weird palette colors on these cards, just tell me what resolution you're using. - If you find high resolution modes too flickering, you can use the switch /NOINTR to turn off interlacing.
For the S3 Trio 3D/2X, the following modes aren't working: 400x300, 512x384, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 (256, 32K/64K and 16M color modes), 720x480 (256 colors) and 720x576 (256 and 32K/64Kcolors). Most can be easily fixed. Also, 320 column modes (except 320x200x256 colors) are squeezed horizontally. Again, this is easily fixed.
On version (99.153): - All Trident video modes supported, except: 512x480@32K/64Kcolors (9000i with 512K RAM) and 640x480@TrueColor (24 bits, on 9440 with 1Mb RAM). These two and others above, aren't supported because of limitations on the chipsets used. It's possible that on the 96xx range of cards, according to the documentation I have, you can have 640x480 in TrueColor and I've add code (well, a clock definition) to get modes bigger than 800x600 in HiColor working too. Modes with 32 bit color should also work, but probably only on other cards than mine. As for the 9000i (and 8900), the limitation is even worse, so you can't even get 512x480 in HiColor. Sorry. If you have Trident cards different than these (superior), and you can't get a certain mode to work, tell me and I'll see what we can do.
On version (99.140): - New Trident modes supported:
- 32K/64Kcolors: 320x200 to 800x600. 1024x768 and above aren't supported for now. Worse, my 9440 card only has 1Mb of RAM, so I couldn't test it if I wanted it. - These modes only work on the TGUI9440 (and others, but not on the 8900-9000i cards) for now. The TrueColor modes and 1024x768x64K+ modes on the 9440 are set in a way that makes them harder to convert. It's not impossible, though! The fix for one, will be the fix for the other, so expect them sometime next week.
On version (99.108): - New Trident modes supported:
- 16 color: 1280x1024. 1024x768 and above aren't supported on the 9000i (and below) due to the lack of a necessary register;
- 256 color: 1024x768 and most likely 1280x1024, but I couldn't test this one because my 9440 has only 1Mb of RAM. - The VESA 1280x1024x16 mode is reported as having a different logical width than the "normal" Trident 1280x1024 mode. This resulted in the breaking of VGATV. It's probably a bug on the BIOS, but to support this mode, I ended up making VGATV support even more modes than before. You better try it. For the curious, this had to do with mode switch nesting.
On version (99.105): - Trident modes supported on tested boards (TVGA9000i and TVGA9440):
- 16 color: 320x200 to 1024x768;
- 256 color: 320x200 to 800x600. On the 9000i, 1024x768x16 colors isn't supported (yet), and the 320x200x256 color mode doesn't have a coherent palette. 1280x1024x16 color syncs on the 9440, but is stretched downwards.
- TV<->VGA mode switching has been improved a bit when swapping in text modes.
- New /M switch to start VGATV in VGA monitor mode.
On version 99.060: - Trident is now properly detected.
- Trident 320x200x16 (mode 0Dh) works fine now (sync).
- Better Trident clock reset. 32k/64k and 16M colors still don't sync, but that's another problem, and I lack documentation now...
- Better text mode support in mode swapping (Monitor<->TV), though still not 100%. Should be enough until it's fixed.
On version 99.055: - Switching between VGA mode and TV mode implemented. Text isn't restored properly, as I didn't had the documentation available then. I have it now, so you just wait a couple of days...
- A small optimization to save TSR memory use. Note that because of the feature above, the code actually grows a bit, but without this, it would be even bigger.
On version 99.047: - Executable size shrinked and memory used also reduced, due to code conversion to TASM.
- To uninstall the driver, you now must do VGATV /u, instead of the previous key combination (which wasn't working that well, anyway).
- Some minor bugs corrected.