Realising the hi-performance capabilities of STB Lightspeed VL Bus card

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Last update: 6th November, 1995

Symptoms

Unable to exploit hi-res/hi-refresh capabilities under Warp.

Hardware

STB Lightspeed VL Card (based on ET4000W32P-D chipset)

Problem

I've downloaded the TLIW32PM.DLL patch, but SVGA.EXE still won't acknowledge the hi-res hi-refresh capabilities of my ET4000W32P-D based video card under Warp. The card is an STB Lightspeed VLB, an ET4000W32P-D based unit with 2MB DRAM.

Whether running a full-screen DOS session, or even booted from DOS, doing an "SVGA status" shows that the card is capable of 1280x1024 @72, 70, 60, and 43 Hz. Yet doing "SVGA ON" or "SVGA ON DOS" generates an SVGADATA.PMI file that only contains 1280x1024@43Hz, (and only 43Hz and 60Hz for 1024x768). I know the card can do the higher resolutions, and that SVGA.EXE is somehow aware of it (because the "SVGA status" shows it), but I cannot get it to generate the datafile with those resolutions/refresh.

Procedure

get ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/he/hercules/dynamite/svga.exe
Boot DOS, then run "svga monitor dos". This will then ask you what configuration you want. Tell it "AUTO". It will then generate the complete SVGADATA.DOS.
Reboot OS/2
Copy your old svgadata.pmi file in case something goes wrong, i.e. copy \os2\svgadata.pmi \os2\svgadata.old
Copy the svgadata.dos file created in step 2 to \os2\svgadata.pmi
Shutdown / reboot
Go to the System/System settings/Screen page two, and make sure it has the right monitor setting
Shutdown / reboot
Go to the System/System settings/Screen page one, and choose the hi-res/hi-refresh graphics setting you want.

Thomas Warfel