There is defacto nothing that uses 640x200@16colors. Even a demoscene-product does not use it.
Currently I display Images with Lowres Tandy/EGA Gfax with Deluxepaint's "gallery" which is fast an very nice.

For 640x200 gfx I can use cshow, but it is SLOW and I do nor have Images for this.

The over way is some strange Basic stuff with no gui, which can display 85colors with flickering on a tandy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR1uq4y9G34

bjt wrote:

If you install the 128k RAM expansion, you may have a free 64KB at A000 that could be used to hold drivers or DOS with USE!UMBS/DOSMAX.

This might prevent you from using 640x200x16 though, I'm not sure.

It does not work that way. If you have an EGA or VGA card installed in a Tandy 1000 with 768KB, the extra 128KB gets disabled and the graphics card's RAM gets control over the memory mapping in the A000 and B000 segments. It is only useful for the built-in Tandy Graphics Adapter.

Yep, but I thought we're discussing a machine with TGA only.
The TL tech ref says that for a 768kb machine, the CGA memory window at B800 maps onto memory at that location.
So maybe for CGA modes at least, Axxx is unused and has memory accessible from the CPU.

dr.zeissler wrote:

There is defacto nothing that uses 640x200@16colors.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?30424

😀 wow...but 8086@9,54Mhz... I'll have to test them.

Tandy 1000 RL/HD Mouse and Joystick

Is there a test-program that works with the tandy-joystick ? I think the joystick is not adjusted/configured correctly. Some games have issues with it. I have a joystick-test-program for Dos, but it does not work with my tandy-joystick on my tandy 1000rl/hd. It works correct with a gravis-gamepad connected to the joystick-port of a ct1350b. I think I need a special joystick-ajust-program to configure tandy-joysticks on a tandy?

What is the best solution for a mouse on a tandy? I have the original ps/2 tandy mouse. it works with both the cutemouse1.9 and the logitech-mouse5l that is on the tandy-dos-disk. BUT both drivers do not work with win1x/2x. Therefore I used a serial-mouse with an old ms-mouse-driver. Currently my floppy does not work, so I have to find another way to put software on the tandy. the 8bit isa-slot is used by the xtide, so the only way (without modifying the board) will perhaps be a serial connection.

I have started a Yahoo-Newsgroup "Tandy-Webshrine", but currently no new solutions yet.

Here are some problems:

- F-16 Falcon => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- North&South => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- Operation Neptune/Hostages => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- TestDrive1 => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- Rockford/BoulderDash => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- Pitstop2 => Tandy-Disk/Version not found yet
- Ninja (Tandy-Disk/Version quits to Dos after playing a short while)
- SkiOrDie (Tandy-Version start but quits to Dos after starting a game ingame)
- Xenon1 (Tandy-Disk/Version starts but freezes after the IntroScreen)

- Summer-Games/World-Games (CGA) do not start. executing the com-file leeds directly back to dos. (The startfile (COM) is about 400byte and the diskimage? is about 360KB)
- I also have a "special?" Version of WinterGames (CGA). The startfile (COM) is a bit bigger (about 2KB) und the Diskimage? is smaller then 360KB, round about 320KB, this cga-version runs fine on my tandy1000rlhd.
- I don't know if there exits also a version of Summer- and Worldgames with the bigger start-file. (com)

Greetings
Doc

I put together a patch for Alley Cat that enables 3-voice sound and custom colours on Tandy, just like the PCjr version.
The custom colours should work on EGA & VGA too.

https://github.com/bjt42/tandycat

Here's a video of it in action on my TL/2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGycFyjGPQ

Tried Star Trek 25th Anniversary on my TL/2. As expected it's far too slow to be enjoyable. Strangely, the game runs noticably faster in EGA mode on this machine in Tandy mode, maybe some slow conversion routine is involved. It looks cool though!

bjt wrote:

I put together a patch for Alley Cat that enables 3-voice sound and custom colours on Tandy, just like the PCjr version. The cus […]
Show full quote

I put together a patch for Alley Cat that enables 3-voice sound and custom colours on Tandy, just like the PCjr version.
The custom colours should work on EGA & VGA too.

https://github.com/bjt42/tandycat

Here's a video of it in action on my TL/2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGycFyjGPQ

Thx for that. It worked perfect! Great 😀

btw. Deskmate is not usefull as a command-center for all games/programs/demos on the harddisk.
What tools do you prefer for that?

Thx
Doc

COMMAND.COM 😀

GLX212 has no CGA support, but it works with MDA, EGA and VGA. Perhaps there is an earlier version (before 2.12) that has CGA support.
I can't find any other version than 2.12 in the web, perhaps someone has an erlier one. The other way could be making contact to the main coder (Carlo Vogelsang)
but I don't know if he is still alive.

dr.zeissler wrote:

GLX212 has no CGA support, but it works with MDA, EGA and VGA. Perhaps there is an earlier version (before 2.12) that has CGA support.
I can't find any other version than 2.12 in the web, perhaps someone has an erlier one. The other way could be making contact to the main coder (Carlo Vogelsang)
but I don't know if he is still alive.

GLX_CGA (Patched) with "setdac-tool" does work very nice with T1000 RL/HD
Now setting up cshow 8.6 with 1000SL/TL support 640x200@16 colors.
I have noticed that ega-title-screens like Falcon-AT do work pretty well in 640x200.
Loading times for converted PC88-Art is very long, I will check if I can optimize
to 16 color standard cga pal in order to get faster loading-speeds.

I'll keep you up to date.

bjt wrote:

Yep, but I thought we're discussing a machine with TGA only.
The TL tech ref says that for a 768kb machine, the CGA memory window at B800 maps onto memory at that location.
So maybe for CGA modes at least, Axxx is unused and has memory accessible from the CPU.

640 x 200 x 4 / 8 / 1024 = 64kb

Never knew what happened to the other 64kb

The TDY patched Keen4 does not work for me 🙁
I recently got F16 Falcon in Tandy-Version.

What do you think is the best way to convert PC88 8color Images 640x400 to 16 color EGA 640x200 Tandy.

cshow833 loads the 640x400 natively so only 200lines visable, cshow904 loads them to native format 640x200.
I would love to convert them directly to 640x200 in order to save the processingtime for the resizing on the tandy.

here is an example (8colors) : https://i.warosu.org/data/vr/img/0015/62/1398510956140.gif

I am not satisfied with the way I used on them. I load the CGA 16 color palette in it and after that I convert it to 640x200.

dr.zeissler wrote:

here is an example (8colors) : https://i.warosu.org/data/vr/img/0015/62/1398510956140.gif

IIRC, PC98 did 640x400. PC88 only did 640x200. Your example pic really is 640x200, all of the pixels in it are double height. Just resize it to 640x200 and then no further conversion would be necessary, right?

except the wrong color palette.

Regarding the 640x200x16 mode:

I'm currently fiddling around with some TSR code that pretends to set VGA's 320x200x256 mode 13h while actually setting the Tandy mode.
Since that mode has a compatible memory layout, every 256 color pixel will simply show up as a pair of 16 color pixels.

Viewed from a distance, the result will look like a 256 color picture (136 unique colors) with more or less this palette:

Correction: 136 is the number of unique color combinations. With the CGA colors as base palette, the number of unique average colors is actually 122, because some combinations have the same average color.

With such a TSR driver, one could run VGA/MCGA programs directly, provided that they don't use any advanced features and don't do too much error checking.

I will attach my code and two self-displaying bitmap files (rename to .com), one with a custom palette (will show up garbled), one converted to the palette from above.
Please note that I could only test it in DosBox, so don't use it on real hardware unless you know what you are doing.

That’s amazing, I would have loved that back in the day.
Too bad I got rid of my RL 5 years ago 🙁