Try running as root...
Cheers, Dean McEwan. Currently hacking KGI, which I don't understand, oh and ask me
about OpenModemTalk...
On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 04:42:05 -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
--- Begin Message ---
>I'd want to know specifically if
>video hardware on hp is significantly different in some way from any
>other pc-compatibles. Bet it isn't.
I'm sure it isn't...
>It makes no sense there is no hardware switch to turn off shadowing, so
>now I'm curious what method hp uses.
Well i'm not much of a hardware person so I never really looked to see if
there was a hardware switch in the first place. I've heard from other HP
users about bad experiences trying to take the case on the HP off. It
sounds as if it's a general pain in the a$$. Regardless of whether or not
there's a hardware switch in the system, it's still very annoying that HP
never decided to put in a setting in the bios setup program to disable
video/bios shadowing.
>Surely this info would be available to a hardware
>owner. And if there are no hp-specific publications, perhaps a phone
>call to one of their engineers that works on video addressing would
>yield something. Somebody had to decide how things would be done at
>some point in your machine's history. A direct call might just be the
>fastest way to get an answer and maybe even a reference or two, or a
>private privileged (you paid your moneys) online link for users.
heh most systems that you buy in the store don't give you detailed manuals
and are you suggesting I call tech support because I hate the very idea of
that. I never ever had to call tech support for any of my past and present
systems. I choose not to because it's a royal pain the a$$ and most of the
time they can't help you anyway. You end up wasting money, especially if
you were to ring up microsoft's god awful tech support line from HELL (i'm
glad I never called them. all the horror stories *gasp*). I seem to get the
impression that hp's tech support is crap too, especially from when I use
to browse there now semi defunct tech forums.
> > I've tried getting graphics to work in dosemu before in the
> > past but everytime i tried to run a game such as wolf3d the thing went
> > black which forced me to switch terminal screens and log back in to
> > kill the dosemu process.
>
>Forced how? Did it hang, no response? Going all black might mean just
>no memory, no pointer to memory, the memory it needs.
Yeah the process locked up. The system didn't lock up (if it was winblows
it probably would've).
>Wolf3d does have source code available for free. Have you compiled it
>to work on your system? Somewhere in that code would be the video
>addressing routines. Compile, run with lots of stderr, study the error
>messages, find the trouble spot. See how it would be solved in the
>non-proprietary system. Forgive, all theoretical, you're probably in a
>hurry to play the darn game.
Yeah I know the source code is available but I don't have the right tools
to compile it right now and I don't even think it will compile on linux
without having to tweak it some bit. I'm not much of an expert at
programming (although i'm learning).
> > .. needed to disable video/bios shadowing. This is what most people
> > seem to suggest when someone asks the question "how do i get graphics
> > to work"
>
>Need a more specific question to get a better answer. There are refs
>that cover these things, search for "svga programming shadow methods".
>I tried it, found this to start:
>
>http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/9784/tut.html
>2D Basics, VGA Mode 13h
> SVGA - vesa, vbe 2
>
>By the way, what kind of video do you have? VESA? Lots of docs on that
>standard. Find out all the details you can on your video interface,
>what the range and limits of your monitor/video firmware.
Well the system isn't that old. It's only 3 years old. I bought it back in
99. My video card is an ATI Rage Pro btw.
> > ... but the fonts were screwy since it was using the default terminal
> > font and I never did figure out how to fix that.
>
>But therein lies some secrets. Text on video is done much the same way.
>Maybe slug through that, find out how it does switch to non-hardware
>fonts. Map the known.
I get the impression after reading your entire post that you think i'm some
sort of programmer <g>? I know some programming (assembly, qbasic, c, c++,
etc...) but i'm not that good at it. Like I said, I'm still learning heh
<g>. I seem to recall someone once saying on some usenet group that you
might need to switch the default console font to a font that supports ibm
ascii characters. I don't think any distro I played with came with such
fonts. However, I did play around with the console fonts included with the
distros. I think I almost got the characters looking right too (ZZT wasn't
as messed up but there was some things that were still screwy). So I think
what I need is a console font that uses ibm ascii characters. I also think
I read somewhere that running the X windows version of dosemu might fix
this problem too, that the problem is only with the console.
> > Oh, I also got QBasic to work too but it
> > appears to be really slow so i'm afraid even games like wolf3d would
> > be coming to a halt on this 450 mhz system.
>
>It would of course be slow, not comparable to compiled C or assembly
>code, processed in RAM. Imagine running X with 8 megs free RAM. It
>would swap on the hardware. Be click and wait. ;)
heh yeah I know that. QBasic wasn't that bad under the console. It loaded
up quickly just that the screen being drawn was much slower than it was in
native dos (I expected it to be a little slower, but not that slow). I
suspect that a game such as wolf3d would be even slower to the point where
it might be unplayable. I'm thinking it could've been something else that
was making it slower then usual. Perhaps it was because I was running the
linux distro, that I was playing with at the time, on top of a dos
partition? I haven't yet tested dosemu on a linux distro that runs on it's
own partition so i'm hoping it'll be faster when I do.
> > I was really hoping there was another solution to getting graphics to
> > work in dosemu without having to really disable video/bios shadowing
> > in the first place.
>
>Not without getting down and dirty, I expect. HP somehow uses its own
>shadowing algorithms/switches/memory moves. Where and how it does it is
>documented somewhere or no one could write code for it. Are those
>routines built into ROM by any chance?
heh there you go again, asking me as if I should know. Seriously, this HP
system is probably like many other pcs out there. I'm sure it does
shadowing in a similar fashion. What do you mean no one could write code
for it? This system is like any other pc clone/compatable out there. It has
an x86 processor (Pentium III) and it's not a sparc or an alpha, etc...
Anything written for other pcs or operating systems (windows, linux,
etc...) should work on it as long as they don't have any specific hardware
requirements (like a graphics accelerator, a particular sound card, more
ram, etc...) or operating system requirements. Just so you know, this
system came with windows 98 (and a upgrade CD to 98se). If you want more
information on it then just browse on over to:
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/personal_computing/support_doc/bph05044.html
That link takes you to a page with the specs for the system. Keep in mind
this system is atleast 3 years old. My bios is a Phoenix bios btw (modified
for this system obviously so any other Phoenix bios update that didn't come
from HP would probably hose the bios and the system).
>Apologies if I'm way off base here. Am new. Will shut up and listen
>now.
>
>Cheers, Pat
heh np =P
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