From: ericwolf@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Eric Wolf)
Subject: Re: 256 Colors in WPS
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 06:44:48 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.133454.5132@odin.diku.dk> gogol@diku.dk (Peter Skov Knudsen) writes:
>vohwi-d@acsu.buffalo.edu (David A. Vohwinkel) writes:
>
>>I hope this question hasn't been asked a million times...... but I'll ask it 
>>anyways....
>
>>	Is there a way to get 256 colors as a background in the WPS... I have
>>installed the latest service pack( I ordered it from IBM), I have run dspinstl,
>>and loaded the TSENG SVGA drivers in 1024 x 768 x 256  and the 640 x 480 x 256
>>and rebooted... Then typed svga on in both the dos full screen and os2 full 
>>screen and no go. What I want to do is have a SVGA .Gif picture converted
>>to .BMP mode and displayed on the screen as a background in the Work Place
>>Shell. I used gif2bmp, and the latest vpic to do the conversions. I can view
>>the .bmp in 256 colors using vpic but when I put it as the background it only
>>comes up in 16 colors!!!!!  Is there a program out there that will fix this.
>>Or did I do something wrong...... 
>
>>			Thanks 
>
>>				Dave V
>
>1) You tell, that you have used dspinstl to install the hires Tseng drivers.
>This is a bad mistake. You should ALWAYS use selective install to install
>a new display driver. Its possible to install a display driver with dspinstl,
>but it wont make all the neccesary changes to your system. For one thing,
>you wont get the proper fonts installed - just have a look at the ugly font
>used for the tabs on a notebook. More seriously, dspinstl will sometimes
>give you a highly unstable system - I guess that it doesnt replace all the
>files. But all is not lost. You should use selective install to install the
>plain vanilla VGA drivers (which will fix up the mess you've made. Then reboot
>and once again use selective install to install the required drivers, and
>all will be fine. It may seem a bit strange, why IBM has included the dspinstl
>program, when as a matter of fact you should NEVER use it. But whatever the
>reason is, the dspinstl program is NOT DOCUMENTED and IBM has never mentioned
>it, which should give you a fair warning against using it. The README file
>for the CSD specificly says, that you should use selective install to 
>install new graphic drivers!
>
>2) If youve installed the TSENG drivers from the CSD, you will most definately
>have a 256 color display (since all the TSENG drivers from the CSD are
>256 color drivers). The catch is, that the palette management in these drivers
		     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>isnt as good as one could hope for. This means that most 256 color bitmaps
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>will look strange when used as a background. There are two "workarounds"
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>for this: Find a bitmap whose pallete closely matches the one tha OS/2 uses,
>or convert your bitmap to greytones. It seems that the OS/2 pallete includes
>all the 64 greytones that can be generated, so B/W bitmaps look just fine.
>The problem with Windows programs messing up the pallette, is due to OS/2
>allowing Windows programs to play around with the pallette. I dont think,
>that theres any workaround for this.
>
>Regards
>
>Peter Skov Knudsen, email gogol@diku.dk
>Computer science student, University of Copenhagen


Can we expect fixes for these flawed Tseng 4000 drivers in the next CSD with
the Windows 3.1 release of OS/2?



(********************  IBM ARE YOU LISTENING ??????  ************************)



Or what card can I buy where the drivers ARE working correctly?
I would like to FINALLY get a card where I can run the OS/2 WPS in 
1024x768 and hopefully in 256 (working) colors at a decent speed...

	HELP!!!!!
			HELP!!!!!
					HELP!!!!!


Thanks!

- Eric Wolf
  ericwolf@mentor.cc.purdue.edu

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