VOGONS


Change rom font on Tseng4000 vga?

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First post, by keropi

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Hiya!

my newly acquired Tseng VGA has some regional font in it's ROM , it just looks weird to me and I'd like to have the US one instead - the one we got here 🤣

2mDzwbF.jpg

iQNrzzAm.jpg

I suspect one burns a new set of VGA BIOS and/or SYNC-ROM to fix that, is there any place to get them?

TIA!

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Reply 4 of 24, by keropi

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wow... any idea why? just so they can stand out? I took some quick pics:

VEV123qh.jpg

z7GUsZzh.jpg

maybe there is another newer bios out there with normal L character?
I realize this is next to nothing to complain but still - I'd love a "normal" lowercase L character 🤣

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Reply 5 of 24, by elianda

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@Keropi: I got http://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_tseng_et4000ax_1.html
It looks quite similar. If you want a ROM image for comparison PM me.

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Reply 7 of 24, by keropi

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I found a newer BIOS revision - it has a "normal" l this time but the zero is slashed - maybe they needed one character different at all times 🤣

r71Ynvkh.jpg

@elianda
that's the exact same card , what's the BIOS version on your card?

edit:
now I remember why I did not bother with TSENG cards:

vga mode: flashing checkerboard
BLAOxpJh.jpg

ega mode: flashing black transparency of some sorts
09kMFi5h.jpg

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Reply 8 of 24, by kixs

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Good to know there are other fonts... I might have seen them, but it's not important to me. I'm kinda used to them as I had ET4000 for some years in those times 😉

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 9 of 24, by BloodyCactus

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I _HATED_ that 'l' with a passion with my tseng. its so bad ugh.

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Reply 10 of 24, by elianda

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keropi wrote:

@elianda
that's the exact same card , what's the BIOS version on your card?

Took me a while to gather all the cards from the archive, but here you go:

Card 0: 01/07/93 V8.00 (Machspeed) - this card is not in my gallery at retronn.de, only difference here is that it doesn't have an odd/even BIOS, layout is the same otherwise
Card 1: 04/15/92 V8.06 - notation as in linked gallery entry
Card 2: 04/15/92 V8.06 - notation as in linked gallery entry

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Reply 11 of 24, by stamasd

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I must be the least OCD person on this site... The Tseng 'l' doesn't bother me at all, nor does the slashed zero... (I slash my zeros in handwriting anyway, makes for less confusion)

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 12 of 24, by Jo22

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stamasd wrote:

I must be the least OCD person on this site... The Tseng 'l' doesn't bother me at all, nor does the slashed zero... (I slash my zeros in handwriting anyway, makes for less confusion)

I'm fine with it, too. Reminds me a tiny bit of the "l" character in cursive handwriting..
Perhaps we do just have a bad taste ? Haha. 🤣

Btw, I just checked my own dump I use for PCem. It is the ordinary one.
I secretly hoped I got the freaky font.

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Reply 13 of 24, by dr.zeissler

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keropi wrote:
I found a newer BIOS revision - it has a "normal" l this time but the zero is slashed - maybe they needed one character differen […]
Show full quote

I found a newer BIOS revision - it has a "normal" l this time but the zero is slashed - maybe they needed one character different at all times 🤣

r71Ynvkh.jpg

@elianda
that's the exact same card , what's the BIOS version on your card?

edit:
now I remember why I did not bother with TSENG cards:

vga mode: flashing checkerboard
BLAOxpJh.jpg

ega mode: flashing black transparency of some sorts
09kMFi5h.jpg

if you set the tseng to EGA mode with VMODE these problems are gone.
But I would like to correct the image-ajustment of my et4000 between vgatextmode 80x25 and lowres vga 320x200. they differ around 1cm on my tft.

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Reply 15 of 24, by elianda

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I can not remember seeing these issues with ET4000 cards.

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Reply 16 of 24, by dr.zeissler

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It depends on the card. Some ET4000 cards with 256color are mostly OK, but I can confirm that my diamond-speedstar-vga needs the svga-fix on some games.
The ET4000/w32 are even worse. My PCD4L with ET4000/w32 produces ugly glitches on PriratesGold and also in TowerAssault.
I think those ET4000's are hyped too much. Though they are fast, but not too compatible. S3 and CL seem to have the better cards.

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Reply 17 of 24, by Tiido

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I have had to use SVGA fix in Keen games to get stuff to run without visual glitches...

And as far as topic title goes, I also had an issue with strange L chars on my ET4000 card and a while ago I ended up hacking the ROM with my own font :

IMG_2378.JPG
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IMG_2379.JPG
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The font got tweaked a bit more after the photos were taken. One thing I discovered was that there were a row of characters in the ROM that were used to override some chars in the main set i.e the zero in first pic, mine had a line going through it rather than a dot in the middle and couple other chars weren't what I made the such as T and Z).

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Reply 18 of 24, by Baoran

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dr.zeissler wrote:

It depends on the card. Some ET4000 cards with 256color are mostly OK, but I can confirm that my diamond-speedstar-vga needs the svga-fix on some games.
The ET4000/w32 are even worse. My PCD4L with ET4000/w32 produces ugly glitches on PriratesGold and also in TowerAssault.
I think those ET4000's are hyped too much. Though they are fast, but not too compatible. S3 and CL seem to have the better cards.

At least my ET4000/w32p vlb card has no problems with commander keen 4. I have not tried those games you mentioned though.

Reply 19 of 24, by Tiido

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Perhaps the problem originates from video BIOS rather than hardware ? It would be nice to have the BIOS dump to test on my card (once I get back home).

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