On 23 Oct 02, at 8:54, Tony Parker wrote:
David:
What intrigues me is how WinXp will "see" and emulate some video cards, and then ignore others which can still be "seen" under DOS. The "why" to that question is probably the solution to Bill's problem.
The "why" is probably determined by the video driver vendor's design decisions. I had a system at the office several years back, an IBM PS/2 that ran Windows 3.1. The max rez the Windows drivers supported was 1024x768x256 (60Hz refresh rate!). Fractint could drive the same hardware at 1600x1200x256 with a 100Hz refresh rate! With W31 and (to an extent) W9x, direct hardware access was available. With NT and its derivatives, direct hardware access it *not* available, so everything has to funnel through the WIndows video driver, and is limited by whatever design decisions the driver developer made. Simple.
OS2! Now there's a flash from the past. It seemed like a rock solid 32-Bit OS at the time.
Still is, both rock solid and 32-bit. Check out its current incarnation as eComStation <http://www.ecomstation.com>.
I installed worked on some interesting dedicated systems that ran under OS2 back in the early-mid '90s. I can understand why Fractint might like it.
OS2 may have run nicer than Windoze, but it wasn't an easy OS with which to install and work. Compared to Windoze, installing networks, hardware, peripheral devices, and software under OS2 always seemed to be overly complicated and kludgey.
You're not me. I'm currently using as I type this, on my Duron box that I was *never* able to get Windows to install on. On the Tower (one of my other systems), it took four installation ties for Windows to recognize the plain-vanilla standard serial port on the system. I like and use 3COM NICs (3C905C family is great across all platforms!). With OS/2, I just insert the card, power up the machine, install the driver, and go. With Windows, you boot WIndows and run the DOS mode app that preps the Windows registry, then you shutdown, install the card, power up again, cancel the "New hardware found" dialog box, then you go run the 3COM setup program to install the drivers, then you shutdown and restart again. Also, the Tower dual-boots OS/2 and W9x. Over the 12 years I've had it, its insides have changed processors, motherboards, video cards, and NICs. *Every* time I've changed motherboards, I've had to reinstall Windows. I've *never* had to do that with OS/2. And I don't have to worry about my OS/2 system spreading Windows viruses around ... I started with Windows, and find OS/2 much easier to install, configure, and maintain. Anyway, an updated video driver might provide Bill the ability to use some higher-res modes under WXP, but I'd still recommend putting OpenDOS on a dedicated machine and letting it use all of its processor cycles for generating fractals. ;-) David gnome@hawaii.rr.com