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Reply 20 of 343, by DosFreak

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On my list of things to do for my list....quickest thing I can think of is to Grep your DOS games for recognizeable values......."VESA" would probably be the most common value....of course I'm not sure how Pre-VESA modes can easily be found unless there is some other common value to search for. I guess specific chipsets, "Tseng", "S3", etc etc.

Reply 21 of 343, by robertmo

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vasyl: it is quite easy to install this game. you can do it two ways:

1. This is how i did it. You need to use a real floppy - and install a game even in winxp. Just run command.exe and put install.exe on a floppy and run it. Soon it will ask you to insert disk one (it detects number by the name of a file (One, Two etc.). So you need that file on a floppy and press enter - the installer with crush telling you it cannot find a specific file - so just copy that file to the floppy and run install again. Do it untill the whole game is installed 😀

2. Later i discovered a simplier way (by comparing the version i have installed with the one before installing). Just copy everything to one folder on your hdd and edit all *.rdf files and set corretc path there. Instead of One:\file place C:\folder\file

Although the second method won't allow you to use a faster decompressed pictures. Cause installer decompresses them after installation.

That's it 😀

Reply 22 of 343, by robertmo

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As for a list of games:

VESA - http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attr … et,0/p,2/so,1a/

SuperVGA - http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attr … et,0/p,2/so,1a/

list of SuperVGA games = SuperVGA - VESA 😉

Not complete and may have errors but better than nothing.

Reply 23 of 343, by robertmo

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You say that Wonderland uses VESA. Are you sure? I think it is just a non standard SuperVGA.

By the way - It seems to be the oldest game using SuperVGA (1990). The manual says that the option SuperVGA in setup is for "Video 7- and Paradise-compatible" cards. May this mean that these two svga cards are the oldest SuperVGA game standards and that's why the most compatible with games?

Reply 25 of 343, by Srecko

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Tried it with Virtual pool which should run with tseng 4000 in 640x480.
I used to play this game in 640x480 on my "s3 805" but only 320x is now possible.

1. default plain VGA 320x mode gets broken with any tseng chipset selected in dosbox.conf
2. SVGA mode with tseng driver doesn't work

While writing this, I tried virtual snooker and got same result.

Game supports lots of different video cards (but not s3 trio) and VESA 1.2 640x480 which doesn't work in dosbox. Among them is also diamond viper 1024x768 😀

Reply 26 of 343, by vasyl

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robertmo: I've got Wonderland to install (in VirtualPC using disk images). There is something very odd about SVGA modes that it supports. The setup refers to Paradise and VESA but in 1990 VESA was not approved yet, in fact, it was not in common use until 1994. However, the manual refers to Paradise and Video7 which makes much more sense for UK-made game from that year. My guess is that either Video7 was one of the founding members of VESA committee and somehow confused people with that or there was some popular Video7-based card called VESA (just like some games referred to Diamond when in fact they supported generic S3 chipset). Well, here's another argument for modular SVGA support. I can add some basic Paradise or Video7 support after I deal with some Tseng intricacies.
Oh, and thanks for that Mobygames link. I thought that that site might have something like this, just did not try it yet.
Srecko, thanks for the tip about Virtual Pool/Snooker -- that's another great test case. I will check if the problem is similar to Dawn Patrol in some way. I assume, you've tried it with my patch but without any other code modifications mentioned in this thread?

Reply 27 of 343, by vasyl

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All right, got Dawn Patrol working without artefacts! I will add another small patch to my main patch later. For now, here's what needs to be done. All changes are in vga_memory.cpp.

1) In VGA_NormalReadHandler add the very first line:
start += 64*1024*vga.svga.bank_read;
2) In VGA_GFX_256U_WriteHandler add the very first line:
start += 64*1024*vga.svga.bank_write;
3) In the same function remove line
vga.mem.latched[start+64*1024].d=pixels.d;
4) In VGA_SetupHandlers remove break; after case M_LIN8:

Now I feel particularly stupid about item 3 -- I wasted time looking for some complexity where simplification was needed. In any case, Dawn Patrol seems to work perfectly with these changes. I wonder if Virtual Pool uses the same video mode hacks.

Reply 30 of 343, by vasyl

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😊 Oops, I should've been paying more attention. Apparently, I've read only the first two characters and them my tired brain "reconstructed" the rest. Now it all makes sense, VEGA was indeed a name for Video7 chipset.
All right, so Wonderland does not work yet. I don't expect it to push on hardware too hard, so basic Paradise or V7 implementation would suffice. I'll put it on my todo list. So, which one first -- Paradise or V7?
This weekend I will try to get Virtual Pool running, then look through those lists on Mobygames and see if there is anything I have in my collection that should be tested.

Reply 31 of 343, by HunterZ

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I vote for Paradise, but only because it was the first SuperVGA chipset I had back in the day.

I'd really recommend grabbing some of those Moraff games from HotU, as they support tons of different SVGA chipsets from what I remember.

Looks like that Wonderland game doesn't support it, but I remember Trident being a common SVGA chipset too.

Reply 33 of 343, by ih8registrations

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This timeline purports it was April 89' for VESA.

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:FnruVJSB … rvga+1990&hl=en

Culled from their timeline: (month/year)
7/81 mda
8/81 cga
2/82 pcjr
8/82 hgc
8/84 ega
12/84 tandy 1000
4/87 vga, mcga, 8514/a
4/89 vesa
10/90 xga

Reply 35 of 343, by vasyl

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I am not sure if VEGA was chipset or a card name, I think it was a little of both, but most of all just a catchy acronym Video7 marketing came with (it's not just VGA, it's VEGA!) Made by Cirrus Logic? Not surprising, it was a major OEM those days. Apparently, VEGA name caught some attention in the UK, if the card was referred by name. Interestingly, Western Digital video cards were never referred to as WD -- they were always Paradise cards. So is that chipset name, card name, or just a brand? Speaking of brands, I am not sure the company was called Video7...
VESA existed in some form in 89 or early 90 -- IIRC, Ferraro's "Programming VGA and SVGA" (late 1989) mentions it briefly but does not go into any technical details. 4/89 probably refers to the date when VESA group was found, the standard took a couple years to propagate.
I see HunterZ voting for Paradise. I would vote for that one as well. Any more votes?

Reply 36 of 343, by eL_PuSHeR

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Count another vote for Paradise. My first PC (AMSTRAD PC2086) from 1988 had a built-in Paradise PVGA1A chip. 😎

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Reply 37 of 343, by vasyl

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I've checked Virtual Pool. This one is going to be fun to get running. The driver is 444 bytes long (KET4M.D) and for such a tiny driver and very linear code it is quite confusing. It has the most intricate way to detect ET4000 hardware I've seen to date. I will go through that code and see if I can implement every single feature it tests. However, the real problem is not in ET4000 implementation... The third routine in the driver (first is identification, the second is kind of blit) is setting up video mode. It sets a few VGA (not SVGA) features that are not implemented in DOSBox yet, particularly, line compare and odd/even mode. Considering that the blit routine seems to be working (BTW, it has rather amusing self-modifying code there) I'd say those two are the only things needed to get this game running. Identification can be forced so it is not that much of a problem.