Last edited by Jo22 on 2020-08-29, 13:12. Edited 1 time in total.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
Although Now that I look the bios from VGA museum is a single 64K file, not two seperate 32k(256kbit) roms like you have, I wonder if the card would work with a single 512kbit rom installed in one socket. Another this is that the bios from VGA museum may contain wierd characters as well since it is seems that the people running it and contributing to it the most are Czech.
@i486_inside
I have tried that BIOS, my card does not work with it. I have split it in ODD/EVEN both 8 and 16bit words/bytes and tried installing the roms in all possible configurations, nothing worked for me.
Yes I am attaching it to the post.
I have found a 1.06 32kb BIOS - this one worked BUT it seems the cga/ega stuff is missing so it's not possible to use the card with an EGA mode.
I did further tests with more games btw, although the card is faster than my Paradise EGA it has issues in many: it gets detected as VGA and it will either produce wrong colors or an out-of-sync image (I assume a 70hz image and my EGA monitor does not like it). VGAMODE.EXE that locks the card in various compatibility modes sometimes fixes the wrong colors but the sync issues remain. I have tested jumpering the card down to either EGA PURE (no emulation according to the docs) or EGA , did not change a thing 🤣
I think the 1.06 bios is intended for OTI077 cards, I don't think the OTI077 has EGA it was an updated OTI067 with higher resolution SVGA support. I took the 1.04 bios from vga museum and trimmed the zeros off the end with a hex editor, to make it exactly 32k, here it is if you want to try it.
^ great this worked! It reports "VGA BIOS 067B/C v1.04" instead of "VGA BIOS 067 v1.03" , the included font is the English one so no localized characters. Did not help with the compatibility issues I mentioned above but it's an upgrade in the end. Thanks for that! 😁
Hello again, so I went through my VGA cards, as promised.. All I found was an older OTI-037, though. Maybe it still works with the new OTI-076 ?
I don't know. Anyway, it has a normal character set (?). And more importantly, a colourful rainbow effect during post. 😉
i486_inside wrote:
I took the 1.04 bios from vga museum and trimmed the zeros off the end with a hex editor, to make it exactly 32k, here it is if you want to try it.
Thanks a lot! I was already worried finding a solution was all up to me.. 😅
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
Hello again, so I went through my VGA cards, as promised.. All I found was an older OTI-037, though. Maybe it still works with the new OTI-076 ?
I have serious doubts that it would, since the oti037 is a completely different chip, the oti067 has a much larger square shaped QFP as the main chipset, and from what I can tell the oti057,oti067, and oti077 all use the same bios but the 037 uses a completely different bios.
Ah, I see. I didn't knew that, sorry. I'm probably more used to the Paradise chips, where the big ol' PVGA1A
was software-wise (drivers, video modes, etc.) still somewhat similar to the later WD90C00..C31. 😅
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
Ah, I see. I didn't knew that, sorry. I'm probably more used to the Paradise chips, where the big ol' PVGA1A
was software-wise (drivers, video modes, etc.) still somewhat similar to the later WD90C00..C31. 😅
Edit: Is the Wikipedia article correct ? It says OTI037C is an 8-bit VGA, that is often only able to do standard VGA modes.
My is a 16bit model and can do SVGA just fine (Windows 3.1 in 800x600).
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
VGA Museum shows that there are both 16 and 8 bit versions of the card, the wiki article says "most" only support up to 640x480, it probably depends on what external DAC the manufacturer uses.
[..]the wiki article says "most" only support up to 640x480,
It also describes the 037 as a "VGA card". Not a word is said about SVGA compatibility. 😵
i486_inside wrote:
[..] it probably depends on what external DAC the manufacturer uses.
I think it depends on the oscillators of the RAMDAC also.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
I found a data sheet for the chipset, it looks like the card required higher clocked 100ns ram to run higher resolutions, so may be a lot of the boards used cheaper 120ns ram, and they are limited to 640x480.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
I wonder if the older 037 cards are better with EGA/CGA stuff. Tbh I wouldn't use the 067 for VGA , it's slow and I imagine the 037 will be worse in that aspect. Now I need to find a 037 card to test 🤣