Best thing to modernize Windows 3.1.

If someone compiles this, maybe upload it here or vogons drivers.

😳 I am so awestruck! Will certainly give this a try.

On that note, anyone knows of interesting Windows 3.1 software here that leveraged functionality provided by the 15bpp/16bpp/24bpp video modes? I was trying Microsoft's Paint the other day, to realize it didn't really offer more colors... and I never had a hicolor graphics card back in the day (just a lowly Paradise PVGA1A) to get into hicolor Windows 3.1. This is going to be something new and interesting.

AFAIR even the Paintbrush shipped with Windows 3.1 supports 24-bpp.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2025-01-05, 21:35:

If someone compiles this, maybe upload it here or vogons drivers.

I believe it is already available compiled (under Assets): https://github.com/PluMGMK/vbesvga.drv/releases.

clb wrote on 2025-01-05, 22:35:

😳 I am so awestruck! Will certainly give this a try.

On that note, anyone knows of interesting Windows 3.1 software here that leveraged functionality provided by the 15bpp/16bpp/24bpp video modes? I was trying Microsoft's Paint the other day, to realize it didn't really offer more colors... and I never had a hicolor graphics card back in the day (just a lowly Paradise PVGA1A) to get into hicolor Windows 3.1. This is going to be something new and interesting.

Many programs would look a little better (sometimes a lot) in high color under Windows 3.1. Encarta, office software, clip art, scanner programs, image printing software, even certain video files and video playback. Oddly most web browsers would render many web pages best under high color because the author of the page didn’t choose their color pallets correctly.

Sadly these programs especially scanner, web and video playback really didn’t perform well enough unless you continued using 3.1 well into 1996/97 with a newer machine with more memory , which some of us did.

Nice to see a generic VESA driver supporting more than 256 colors in Windows 3.x! 👍

I was surprised to see such a development and just gave it a try on a system with a FirePro W4100.

At least I managed to get 1080p 24-bit color working okay, with a few non-critical glitches. Despite the rough edges (as well as known issues), it certainly is much better than the patched SVGA driver. Excellent. 👍

Some notes:
- I did give 8-bit color a try. It works, but the color palettes appear distorted. Maybe the video card is to blame. With patched SVGA driver, however, I'm getting a lot of black bars on the screen, usually over white backgrounds (e.g. Program Manager window), though the color palette appeared okay. The default (16-color) VGA driver worked without major issues on the same system.
- In my case, PMIDcheck must be set to "disable" or Windows hangs on boot.
- Don't know to how much extent "DoubleBufferRefreshRate" works. The example used 75 which works in most cases, but it seems to only allow certain values and in my monitor's case, it doesn't appear to actually affect the refresh rate if the specified resolution can be scaled to the one used by the VGA BIOS on system startup.
- When using 24-bit color, on startup I'm getting an error message telling me there's not enough memory* to display all icons, so some were made into black squares. It did not happen when I was trying 8-bit.

(LATE EDIT: PMIDcheck does work on my system setup and recent versions have fixed the issues with hangs. Also, any DoubleBufferRefreshRate value works as of recent versions, my issue was something else.)

* I'm using WFW 3.11 from a MS-DOS 7.10 environment with necessary patches in place. The system has a lot of memory so I loaded WFW's HIMEM.SYS which naturally capped it at 64MB. I'm not using EMM386 as from my past experiences that would only get in the way. I wonder how much memory would the driver as well as Windows require for outputting 1080p resolution at 24-bit color, as 64MB was a lot for Win3.x even back then. (AFAIR Win3.x 386-enhanced mode can only work properly at 256MB RAM or less.)

PS: It seems Windows would automatically change title bar color to "sky blue" if using high colors (16/24 bits). Back then the trait was attributed to S3 but it seems to happen with just any video driver capable of higher color depths than 8-bit (256 colors).

Grzyb wrote on 2025-01-05, 22:51:

AFAIR even the Paintbrush shipped with Windows 3.1 supports 24-bpp.

Yep, can confirm (was running Win3.1 with S3 card and drivers that supported 640x480@24b - although 800x600@16b was a lot more useful for desktop work).

Greatly! 😁
My compliments to the driver’s author 😉

In reality 24bit colors eat too much Windows 3.1 GDI resources. Better use 16bit color for everyday use.

I was using Windows 3.x (switched to 3.11 FWG late 1994) since October of 1992, until 1999 when I upgraded my dad's PC (i386Dx). With the vga default driver.

I only saw higher resolutions and color depths when I created a DOS / Windows 3.x vintage build in spring of 2004. Celeron 300A, Voodoo 3 and found that Voodoo 3 had Windows 3.x drivers!!! I was excited seeing 1024x768 on Windows 3.x!

Post screenshots or it didn't happen..

appiah4 wrote on 2025-01-06, 11:06:

Post screenshots or it didn't happen..

You can use Velocity drivers on a Voodoo 3 under Win 3.1. I've done this in the past and it worked fine.

Falconfly still hosts those Win 3.1 drivers, though I think I got mine elsewhere. Possibly from a Velocity driver CD image.

LSS10999 wrote on 2025-01-06, 06:54:

- When using 24-bit color, on startup I'm getting an error message telling me there's not enough memory* to display all icons, so some were made into black squares. It did not happen when I was trying 8-bit.

I recall getting that error back in the era, when using 24-bpp with some Cirrus 542x chip.
So I guess it's not the driver's fault.

appiah4 wrote on 2025-01-06, 11:06:

Post screenshots or it didn't happen..

Take it!!!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-06, 11:16:

appiah4 wrote on 2025-01-06, 11:06:

Post screenshots or it didn't happen..

You can use Velocity drivers on a Voodoo 3 under Win 3.1. I've done this in the past and it worked fine.

Falconfly still hosts those Win 3.1 drivers, though I think I got mine elsewhere. Possibly from a Velocity driver CD image.

No no, I meant post screenshots of Windows 3.1 running at 4K 😁

I'm gonna try this. I now run a S3 Savage with DFP with Win311 drivers at 1024 x 768 @ 24bit. It's awesome. Curious what I can do with this driver.

What's the highest resolution supported via VBE ?
I thought 1600 x 1200, but it seems this driver can somehow use 1920 x 1080...

Grzyb wrote on 2025-01-06, 13:41:

What's the highest resolution supported via VBE ?
I thought 1600 x 1200, but it seems this driver can somehow use 1920 x 1080...

There is no 'fixed' max resolution. From VESA 2.0 there are not even mandatory/fixed mode numbers, VBE 2.0/3.0 compliant software has to iterate through all the available modes to find the one it needs.
Newer VESA 2.0/3.0 compatible cards when DVI/DP/HDMI outputs are used usually add the native resolution of the attached display to the available modes list.
So even with the same card you can get a different list of supported modes/resolutions depending on the attached monitor.