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Weiss 102 Audio Mastering System Woes...

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First post, by assimilat

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Hello All,

I hope its okay for me to post this here as it isnt really a game problem but it seems you guys know more than any other group online about getting Dos video systems working right...so here we go...

The problem I have is there is an audio mastering system made by Weiss called the 102 http://www.weiss.ch/102/102.html it outputs data to a remote control system which is an old 386 with a proprietary ISA card and a DSP32 card. It runs from Dos using a piece of software called Penguin:

penguin.jpg

Which is the GUI for all the controls. The system came with a 16" monitor that uses of a Diamond SpeedStar 24 that has a Tseng et4000 chipset.

Now I have a 10.2" LCD touch display http://www.xenarc.com/product/1020tsv.html and I would like to use It to streamline the system a bit but when I connect it I just get a garbled mess... I have upgraded to a 120Mhz Pentium system so I could add a PCI USB card for the touch system and I have gotten that part of it to work, But the display on the LCD is still a mess. I have read through the manual and there are only a few thing in there that looked like they have anything to do with the actual PC hardware...all it really says is:

"FROM THIS VERSION ON THE PENGUIN SOFTWARE RUNS ON ALL SUPER VGA CARDS
EQUIPPED WITH AN TSENG CHIP ET4000. (not ALL are tested, ask your distributor)
SEVERAL MANUFACTURERS OF VIDEO CARDS DO USE THIS CHIPSET NOW.
These cards are a little bit slower concerning window management but they are
much cheaper and do provide much better flicker rates! (70 Hz and more)"

I have gotten it to run under Windows 98 but it goes straight to fullscreen mode and it wont let me drop it to a window.

I have also gotten it to load on a newer system running WinXP using VDMSound with VESA mode enabled but the video is still fullscreen and messed up.

Here are the original system specs:
20Mhz IBM 386
64MB Ram
PiQ-1000 Weiss Interface Card (ISA)
CEC/Lucent DSP32C Card (ISA)
Diamond SpeedStar 24(ISA) Tseng et4000
16" HiRez graph. Monitor (50MHz)

Here are the new system specs:
120MHz Pentium I
128MB Ram
PiQ-1000 Weiss Interface Card (ISA)
CEC/Lucent DSP32C Card (ISA)
Diamond SpeedStar 24(ISA) Tseng et4000
XENARC 1020TSV 10.2" LCD Touchscreen

I have a few extra video cards around as well If any of you think using a different one would help....they are:
Creative CT6710 (Nvidia Riva TNT 16mb)
Diamond Viper 770 (Nvidia Riva TNT2 32mb)
Pine XP-PCI2800 (SiS 305)
Jaton PCI53 (Cirrus GD5434 1mb)
Matrox Millenium G450 32mb Dual VGA w/Composite/S-video Dongle
MSI G4MX440-VTP (Nvidia Geforce4 Mx440 64MB Dual VGA /W S-video Out)

And if anyone wants to try it on their systems...it is hosted here:

http://assimilat.net/BW102.rar

It has to be installed from a floppy and to run it without the hardware you have to set these paramaters post install:
set Z80=
set DSP32=
and start it from p.bat or BW102.EXE

Or if you added pstart.bat to your autoexec you can remove those same parameters from pstart.bat and reboot.

I have also uploaded some design notes I found on the system...

http://assimilat.net/2970.PDF

they didnt help me much but they might be able to describe its function better than I did...About all I can tell is the GUI is drawn from BW102.DSK although I have no clue what to do with it...

Thanks for any help!!!

Andrew

Reply 2 of 8, by assimilat

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Yeah it works fine on the system in Dos mode except with the Penguin software...I also just checked it on an XP system and a Mac and both check out fine....the component inputs even work with my DVD player...

Reply 4 of 8, by assimilat

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Sorry for the late reply....works been hell...Yeah I think I tried UNIVBE at 60hz...although im pretty n00bish with it and im not exactly sure that im making it do what it is supposed to...im just installing it and running UVCONFIG and UNIVBE...is there anything else I am supposed to do??

Reply 6 of 8, by ADDiCT

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Most LCD's depend on a 60Hz input, so any other refresh rate could be a problem (no matter if it's too high or too low). Depending on the LCD, a lot of stuff can happen with the "wrong" refresh rate - my 17'', for example, displays a black screen with a warning message.

Btw, i' not 100% sure about that, but using UniVBE could have no effect at all, depending on how the software interfaces with the graphics card.

Ehm... You're probably already aware of that, but why are you using such an ancient system? You can build a Windows-based, high-quality mastering system with relatively low-cost components, and wouldn't have to fiddle with proprietary hard- or software, or the limitations of DOS.

Reply 7 of 8, by assimilat

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Yeah the only reasons we want to keep using it is because

a> we get clients cause we have it.

b> the mastering engineer knows it inside and out.

c> the studio paid something ridiculous for it when it was new i.e. $100,000....

I did hook up a dell monitor and its info OSD said in normal DOS mode it was pushing 720x400 @70hz and with Penguin running it went to 800x600 @56hz I did get another TSR to load and change the resolution and refresh but when I start Penguin it just goes back to 800x600 @56hz so im not sure what to do now. One thought I had was while looking at the files in the install dir there is one called ALTPARM.COM and it looks like it is made to alter the display parameters so im not sure if Penguin is calling that when it loads or what but I guess I'll investigate that a bit....Any other thoughts on how to get this guy pushing 800x600 @ 60hz are extremely welcome though!

Thanks!

Reply 8 of 8, by Silent Loon

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As far as I see it, the problem is that your program uses VESA mode 113 or 114 (800x600 15/16bit) for which your graphics adpater uses a standard horiz.frequency of 56hz, that your LCD can't use.
So what you have to do is getting the graphics card work (together with the programm) using 60hz hor. freq.
My recommendations so far:
change the graphics card. Try the Cirrus card first, then the others. I would skip the SIS, but you can try that too.
If that doesn't help, try one of the nVidia based cards (tnt, Tnt2) with this little tool:
http://home.arcor.de/g.s/vbehz.htm

Look up the manual of your LCD and enter its operating frequencies (for the required 800x600 resolution) in the vbehz configuration. Read the description / readme / txt files carefully, to avoid harm to your display!

Hope that helps.

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