Spinning square (I live in h0pe) Two complete spins, 5s delay and exit:

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/SpinningSquare. … 0240618.001.zip
MD5: 6816f97924777d9dcae6aab23ed5b0a6

Sorry I have to correct myself (I have missed the + and - by my keyboard layout).
And now I have wait after pressing F6.
Original game bundled with 3D Blaster PCI, on real HW run it with Verite mode and
F7 crushes
F6 garbaged screen for about 10 seconds than freezes with no signal
+ no effect
- no effect

robertmo3 wrote on 2024-06-18, 04:29:

Gona do + and - work after pressing F6?

F6 gives garbaged screen for about 10 seconds. If I quick + and - have effect but still garbaged.
Now I have tried my older card, the CT6240 (V1000-E) too.
Most thing similar, but F6 gives a shifted flatter image and immediately freezes.

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-18, 04:29:

Two more FIFO tests: […]
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Two more FIFO tests:

FIFO2 is interactive and should dump stuff to the console.

FIFO3 will take twice as long. It too dumps to the console, but because it's a graphical app you won't see anything.

For some reason the previous FIFO test locked up while querying a mode and the modes it was querying weren't on the list.

If these two crash in the same way I've got a memory corruption problem (all of these run in dosbox-rendition just fine).

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Fifo.20240618.004.zip (two exes inside)
MD5: 32f15ef9483b798024082667853e7712

FIFO2 with the older (V1000-E) and no other card installed, it writes:

1Signature:"VESA"
2Version:200

than stops. fifo.txt is zero.

FIFO3 with the older (V1000-E) and no other card installed, it writes:

1V_EnumVeriteBoards()EntryVESAModeQuery(Vanilla) EntryAllocDosMem returned 1
2VESAQueryMode allocate RAM selector 01C8, segment 1B15 RAM block segment 01C8, offset 0000Succesfully read VESA block
3Signature:"VESA"
4Version:200

than stops. fifo.txt is zero.

The newer (V1000L-P) card with both the FIFO2 and FIFO3 full the same.

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-18, 12:03:

Could someone with a Verité board run this and see if it produces a red square and then shuts down after 5 seconds. Dosbox-Rend […]
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Could someone with a Verité board run this and see if it produces a red square and then shuts down after 5 seconds. Dosbox-Rendition users may have to press [ENTER] after 5 s.

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Square.20240618.001.zip
MD5: ecfa4f9ffb153d27f90fa9c57ed0fcb9

(You will need the included UC file).

The older card goes no signal and at the end signal come back and it writes "DONE",
the newer card writes small garbage from up to down, than some text on the screen but not readable, like mirrored characters, finally clear screen and "DONE".

Thanks Gona!

Gona wrote on 2024-06-18, 19:26:

FIFO2 with the older (V1000-E) and no other card installed, it writes: […]
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FIFO2 with the older (V1000-E) and no other card installed, it writes:

Copy code to clipboard

1Signature:"VESA"
2Version:200

than stops. fifo.txt is zero.

FIFO3 with the older (V1000-E) and no other card installed, it writes:

Copy code to clipboard

1V_EnumVeriteBoards()EntryVESAModeQuery(Vanilla) EntryAllocDosMem returned 1
2VESAQueryMode allocate RAM selector 01C8, segment 1B15 RAM block segment 01C8, offset 0000Succesfully read VESA block
3Signature:"VESA"
4Version:200

than stops. fifo.txt is zero.

The newer (V1000L-P) card with both the FIFO2 and FIFO3 full the same.

I think I see the problem. It's related to BIOS strings. They're not being paged into protected mode address space. I can either stop logging the strings OR
page the BIOS addresses in. I'll see what I can do. It would be nice if the strings could be extracted, but for vQuake I just need the mode info.

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-18, 12:03:

Gona wrote on 2024-06-18, 19:26:

Could someone with a Verité board run this and see if it produces a red square and then shuts down after 5 seconds. Dosbox-Rend […]
Show full quote

Could someone with a Verité board run this and see if it produces a red square and then shuts down after 5 seconds. Dosbox-Rendition users may have to press [ENTER] after 5 s.

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Square.20240618.001.zip
MD5: ecfa4f9ffb153d27f90fa9c57ed0fcb9

(You will need the included UC file).

The older card goes no signal and at the end signal come back and it writes "DONE",
the newer card writes small garbage from up to down, than some text on the screen but not readable, like mirrored characters, finally clear screen and "DONE".

Needs a lot more work, pah!

Twice mor

Twice more unto the breach (tomorrow hopefully):

Ignore this post. All binaries are broken.

1) https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Fifo.20240619.001.zip
MD5: 5468cd54c00200fcd7d17aea03a27673

This should page the string addresses in. The app shouldn't crash trying to print out duff strings (pointed at by real pointers, they should be converted to proper 48-bit watcom protected mode far * (2 byte page selector, 4 byte page offset). The conversion is performed by this call https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/dpmi/api/310002.html) .

2) One more spinning square EXE (need a lot of patience to get this one right):
https://nirvtek.com/downloads/SpinningSquare. … 0240619.001.zip
MD5: 80b9e7506c5bf9686242dd600bab075b

This won't work because the microcode UC file needs to be parsed via its headers. I'm just shoving the entire file into RAM.
(Source with lots of left over test app code:
https://nirvtek.com/downloads/SQUARE.CPP.20240619.001.7z (Also attached)
MD5: 79b59e180579cc51c38611524fce4747)

This should work (Spinning Square Speedy3D/pre-parsed uc file:
2) https://nirvtek.com/downloads/SpinningSquare. … 0240619.002.zip
MD5: 7f9192e7846a5a23e2fb4c9f1fb76993

Thanks again Gona!

The last version of "Fifo" v01 finally works. I was starting to worry that my test system or the card itself had some memory corruption problem.

It generated a one binary megabyte file that I'm attaching to this post. Card is an AGP QDI Legend V2200. I had to shelve the other PC with the Diamond Stealth PCI, so I couldn't try it with this card.

The last version of the spinning square program, on the other side, switches to a graphic mode, display some garbage text in a a green colour and it hangs.

MSxyz wrote on 2024-06-19, 08:06:

The last version of "Fifo" v01 finally works. I was starting to worry that my test system or the card itself had some memory corruption problem.

It generated a one binary megabyte file that I'm attaching to this post. Card is an AGP QDI Legend V2200. I had to shelve the other PC with the Diamond Stealth PCI, so I couldn't try it with this card.

The last version of the spinning square program, on the other side, switches to a graphic mode, display some garbage text in a a green colour and it hangs.

Thanks MSxyz.

The spinning square needs more work. Well at least FIFO works now.

[EDIT] Nope FIFO hasn't worked properly. AArgh!

I think I've figured out what's wrong with fifo.

I can reproduce the garbage results now.

Repeatedly paging in same segment doesn't work. The selector has to be cached.

It only works the first time. All duplicate calls for successive pointers fail.

This should finally work.
[edit] Maybe not.[/edit].

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Fifo.20240619.002.zip
MD5: ddb51add4e8c46af0dd44d4dc8d4b528

I need the VESA modes results for these insane modes. They shouldn't exist, but for some reason vQuake seems to be querying them.

The Speedy3D API test is on the back burner for now.

Try this:
https://nirvtek.com/downloads/Fifo.20240619.003.zip
MD5: bf65722190f225450c6f7a512269c4d8

I went back to the most functional version of the app I had back on May 28 and tweaked a few things.

Tested it both in real mode and protected mode and got the same results. So, *fingers crossed* ... .

Here you go...

MSxyz wrote on 2024-06-19, 14:46:

Here you go...

Thank you, oh thank you!

That worked, well at least the mode list did. There're a lot of repeating modes. Some have a quasi pattern.

856x480? That looks like some sort of underscanned TV resolution and why would vquake want these?

vQuake 2 uses standard 320x200, 400x300, 512x384, 640x480 and 800x600, unless the WhiteMagicRaven hacks are applied to increase the resolutions.

The BIOS strings are still messed up.

Now to see if the mode list matches a V1000.

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-19, 16:15:

856x480? That looks like some sort of underscanned TV resolution and why would vquake want these?

If you type vid_describemode in vQuake (vQuake DOS), there's also that mode available.

It's a legit 16:9 TV / monitor mode. Some early plasma panels / LCD of the period did use that resolution.

MSxyz wrote on 2024-06-19, 16:35:

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-19, 16:15:

856x480? That looks like some sort of underscanned TV resolution and why would vquake want these?

If you type vid_describemode in vQuake (vQuake DOS), there's also that mode available.

It's a legit 16:9 TV / monitor mode. Some early plasma panels / LCD of the period did use that resolution.

Hmmm. It'll be interesting to see if vquake runs once I add the modes in.

FWIW 856x480's also supported in Quake3 (r_mode 11)

leileilol wrote on 2024-06-20, 04:53:

FWIW 856x480's also supported in Quake3 (r_mode 11)

I think I've never run describe modes in a quake game before now.

Nope that didn't work.

Rebel Moon chroma keying tweaked for fonts. It should in a lot of cases be free of ringing:

https://youtu.be/U-_1qVne9fY

Fixing this problem completely is a bit difficult.

I'll post an updated build later today.

A test for Rendition owners with time to kill:

https://nirvtek.com/downloads/SpinningSquare. … 0240621.001.zip
MD5: 7f9192e7846a5a23e2fb4c9f1fb76993

See if it produces a rotating square or (most probably) garbage.

Does anyone know how to enable or disable vQuake DMA support? I know someone posted this earlier but I'm having a bit of a struggle trying to find it.

Also it would be nice to know how to change resolution from the command line.

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-20, 23:52:

Does anyone know how to enable or disable vQuake DMA support? I know someone posted this earlier but I'm having a bit of a struggle trying to find it.

Also it would be nice to know how to change resolution from the command line.

Add -nodma to the dos prompt. To change resolution at the dos prompt you can load a custom config file in which you've added a line that says "Mode xxx" where xxx is the screen mode, same of what you type in the console.

As for VQuake, mode 0 is always 320x200 (accelerated); on my V2xxx cards, mode 4 is 512x384 and mode 6 is 640x480. The first 6-7 modes seems quite universal on all cards, others may depend on the vendor or quantity of onboard memory (for example, my 4MB card does not list anything above 800x600).

MSxyz wrote on 2024-06-21, 05:23:

sharangad wrote on 2024-06-20, 23:52:

Does anyone know how to enable or disable vQuake DMA support? I know someone posted this earlier but I'm having a bit of a struggle trying to find it.

Also it would be nice to know how to change resolution from the command line.

Add -nodma to the dos prompt. To change resolution at the dos prompt you can load a custom config file in which you've added a line that says "Mode xxx" where xxx is the screen mode, same of what you type in the console.

As for VQuake, mode 0 is always 320x200 (accelerated); on my V2xxx cards, mode 4 is 512x384 and mode 6 is 640x480. The first 6-7 modes seems quite universal on all cards, others may depend on the vendor or quantity of onboard memory (for example, my 4MB card does not list anything above 800x600).

Thanks MSxyz!