New Solar OS released 2004_12_25

[BogdanOntanu]

The list shows the modes that the video board could eventually support not the ones that are sure to work.

The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.

So i suggest that you share more than 1Mbyte of  RAM for your on board vido RAM, for example a 4Mytess video RAM should do the trick. But IMHO for 1280x1024 true color resolutions you would need 8Megabytes of video RAM

(6M actually but 8 is the next available power of 2)

[daydreamer]

The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.

but you cant trust VESAtest on newer cards, mine 128mb nvidia 5600FX reports 0kb
to play an old dosgame, first the gameinstaller do the usual VESAtest query and refuses to install because my card isnt svgacompatible, but it works when I plugin a old 2mb pci card and switches to run my 5600 after the game is installed and the rest of VESAfunctions dosgame uses seem compatible or probably emulated somehow

[MichaelW]

The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.

but you cant trust VESAtest on newer cards, mine 128mb nvidia 5600FX reports 0kb
to play an old dosgame, first the gameinstaller do the usual VESAtest query and refuses to install because my card isnt svgacompatible, but it works when I plugin a old 2mb pci card and switches to run my 5600 after the game is installed and the rest of VESAfunctions dosgame uses seem compatible or probably emulated somehow

I think the BIOS on your 5600FX card does not support the VESA extensions. Support for VBE has been steadily declining for years, as it is old technology that is little used today.

[BogdanOntanu]

Well i have never seen a newer video card that is not supporting VESA, the support for is not appearing to be declinig...

Maybe you are right for the new 5600FX but i can not tell since i do not have one here to do the test
Usually is the older applications that expect some special SVGA things or do not follow the VESA standards corectly.

For the  Intel 810 shared memory card i guess is the too little memory allocated to the card by default that limited its VESA modes.

And yes after all sooner or later one can and should make PCI or AGP drivers for newer video cards.
Unfortunately the "new technology" behind those cards is hidden and no freely aailable (ie not even the API and functions for setting them up) :P

[MichaelW]

Well i have never seen a newer video card that is not supporting VESA, the support for is not appearing to be declinig...

Nor have I seen a newer video card that did not support VESA, but then I have not checked any very recent cards. By "declining" I meant that there has been a decline in the number of modes being supported.  I did a small survey some years ago where I sampled and compared the VESA support for all of the video cards I had available. The trend was unmistakable -- the newer the card the fewer the modes it supported. I don't have the numbers available, or a list of the cards I compared, but I do recall comparing a Matrox G450 to a G400 to a G200, an (ATI built) Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo (also ATI built), and a Voodoo 4 to a Voodoo 3. And IIRC among all of the cards I tested I could find only one older one (an STB Velocity 128) that supported dual read/write windows. As an example, here is the info for the Rage Pro Turbo:

VbeSignature = 'VESA'

VbeVersion = 0200

OemString = 'ATI MACH64'

Capabilities:

  DAC is fixed width, with 6 bit per primary color
  Controller is VGA compatible
  Normal RAMDAC operation
  No hardware stereoscopic signaling support

Supported VBE display modes:

  0100h, 0101h, 0110h, 0111h, 0112h, 0103h, 0113h, 0114h,
  0115h, 0105h, 0116h, 0117h, 0118h, 0107h, 0119h, 011Ah,
  011Bh, 0302h, 0303h, 0304h, 0202h, 010Dh, 010Eh, 010Fh,
  0212h, 0213h, 0214h, 0215h, 0222h, 0223h, 0224h, 0225h,
  0232h, 0233h, 0234h, 0235h, 0242h, 0243h, 0244h, 0245h

TotalMemory = 8192KB

OemSoftwareRev = 0100

OemVendorName = 'ATI Technologies Inc.'

OemProductName = 'MACH64GT'

OemProductRev = '01.00'

How many newer cards indicate support for anything close to 40 different modes? And even though roughly half of these modes are not VESA-defined modes, they do conform to the standard and the VBE implementation probably fully supports them.

[BogdanOntanu]

You should have at least 2M or better 4M for high resolution video modes

[AeroASM]

I download SolarOS but do not understand it very well. How can I get it to load the kernel from a FAT32 filesystem?

[pbrennick]

Aero,
You can't --yet--, he will get there.  I am also waiting for NTFS support.  For now, you must run it from a floppy and get what you get.  Remember that this is a work in progress.  I think it is very promising!

You are trying to solve your problems by peeking at his source...  :boohoo:

Paul

[AeroASM]

I have no floppy drive, but I have a bootloader which loads a file from FAT32 to 7C00h. I just want to know if it is possible for me to set it up so it works.

[Bieb]

Point the WinXP bootloader to the .bin.

[AeroASM]

Which bin? Will the bin work correctly (something about being loaded at 8000h?)

[Mark Jones]

Ever hear of a RAM drive?  ;)

Someone must have made a driver for all MS operating systems by now.

[BogdanOntanu]

You can make it load from a dedicated HDD partition that must be below 8G limit.

You could also make it load from an FAT32 file system ... you just need to take care where you place your buffers since I load the OS continousely from 7c00 upwards, just linearely get it in there and then it should run ok.

Smiddy made some tests with this  and you can find info on SolOS web board. I think he succeded.
I do not care much for loading from an FAT32 partition since i think loading should be linear for speed.

Besides with out a floppy disk you will have a lot of troubles testing OS since is non practical to restart you own PC for every test and putting an OS on a HDD is a 2 stage process that slows down testing considerably. Writting an CD-ROM is also slow and costs more.

You can also boot SolOS from an CD-ROM, theoretically an USB stick should be possible also.

While inside the  OS indeed i do neet to support FAT32 and NTFS.

Some primitive FAT32 support/browsing is available as an OS application, NTFS will be available in the future.

[pbrennick]

Hi BogdanOntanu,
I am able to play with your OS on another box so NTFS is not a pressing issue any longer.  When we spoke last, I had one box with an acceptable file system but an unacceptable video card (the dreaded vesa 1.2 crap) and the other box had an acceptable VESA 2.0 type video card but was stuck with NTFS (still am).  I have since been gifted with a nice box from my granddaughter!  Now I can play all I want and I definitely like what I see!  I am thinking about trying some sample code created by me at some near point.

Paul

[BogdanOntanu]

Nice to hear that Paul ;)