betamax80 wrote on 2023-10-17, 18:32:
Unfortuantely that was a no-go, I had the exact same behaviour, a blank screen and no CF active light - I am able to restart with CRTL ALT DEL but that's all. I wonder if there is something wrong at a software level or whether the screen really can't manage 640x480 (if so what is it?!)
Hm. It could be a 640x400 panel, maybe.
Theoretically it's possible to modify a video driver to use 400 lines rather than 480.
But that maybe means that the VGA CRTC registers must be modified manually accordingly.
Unfortunately, I'm more of a layman here. Windows 3.x display drivers contain a big part of the GDI itself, also.
Windows 95 started to use mini drivers, by comparison, which only contain the hardware-specific part.
Hm. Back in the Windows 2.1x days, there were VGA drivers that didn't use the complete VGA resolution (lines).
That was done to enhance compatibility with Windows applications written with EGA resolution in mind.
The plain and older Windows 2.03 was using a bog standard VGA driver, still, as we know it.
That being said, the palette system between Windows 2 and 3 is different.
It's in general possible to use Windows 2.x drivers (non /386 versions) on Windows 3.0 in Real-Mode.
But there's a catch, Windows 3.0 applications will have wrong colours or be monochrome. Windows 1+2 applications will look right, though.
That hints to the circumstance that Windows 3.0 RM kernal really tried to be primarily compatible to older applications.
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