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Source: Kendall Bennett (KendallB@scitechsoft.com)
Moderator: Christopher B. Wright (wrightc@dtcweb.com)
**********************************************************************
 
               -----------------------------------
               SciTech Display Doctor 7.0 for OS/2
                       PREVIEW RELEASE 7
               -----------------------------------


Where do you get it?
--------------------

You can download SciTech Display Doctor 7.0 for OS/2 BETA 7 from our 
ftp site using the following URL:

 ftp://ftp.scitechsoft.com/sdd/beta/os2/sdd-os2-7.0.0-b7.zip


What is SciTech Display Doctor for OS/2?
----------------------------------------

SciTech Display Doctor for OS/2 brings SciTech's proven DOS and 
Windows device support technologies to the OS/2 Operating System. 
Although one of the core features of our DOS and Windows products is 
the support for the VESA VBE/Core standard, the OS/2 version has 
nothing at all to do with VESA services. Rather SciTech Display 
Doctor for OS/2 incorporates the new SciTech Nucleus, Graphics 
Architecture device driver technology to bring SciTech's device 
support to the OS/2 platform.  

SciTech Nucleus is a binary portable, OS neutral, device driver 
architecture. As binary portable drivers, SciTech can fully develop 
and test the core device drivers in the DOS and Windows environments, 
while being able to target any Intel x86 based OS as the runtime 
environment (such as OS/2). This essentially allows the OS/2 product 
to utilise the same SciTech binary device drivers as the DOS and 
Windows versions of the product, improving the quality and 
performance of the drivers for all supported operating systems.  


Runtime Requirements
--------------------

SciTech Display Doctor for OS/2 requires a version of OS/2 Warp 3 or 
OS/2 Warp 4 in order to run. More imporantly, it requires at least 
Warp 3 with fixpack 35, or Warp 4 with fixpack 5 installed. If you 
have a version with earlier fixpacks installed, SciTech Display 
Doctor will refuse to install.  


List of all supported chips:
----------------------------

This is a complete list of the various graphics cards that this 
version of SciTech Display Doctor supports. Please note that this 
list refers to the actual chips being used, not a board-level 
implementation. Thus you will not see any products from Hercules or 
STB on the list, but their products are supported because they use 
S3, Cirrus, Tseng, etc. chips. Also, any card with less than 512KB of 
memory cannot be supported by SciTech Display Doctor.  

 . 3DLabs Permedia, Permedia 2, Permedia 2V
 . Alliance ProMotion 6422, ProMotion AT24, ProMotion AT25
 . Alliance ProMotion AT3D
 . ATI Mach64 GX, Mach64 CX, Mach64 CT, Mach64 ET, Mach64 VT, 3D Rage
 . ATI Mach64 VTB, 3D Rage II, 3D Rage II+, Mach64 VT4, 3D Rage IIC
 . ATI 3D Rage Pro, 3D Rage LT Pro, Rage Mobility, Rage XL, Rage XC
 . ATI Rage 128
 . Chips & Technologies 65550, 65554, 65555, 68554, 68555, 69000
 . Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434, CL-GD5440, CL-GD5436, CL-GD5446
 . Cirrus Logic Laguna 5462, Laguna 5464, Laguna 5465
 . Cyrix Media GX, Media GXi, Media GXm
 . InteGraphics IGA1680, IGA1682, IGA1683, CyberPro 2000
 . InteGraphics CyberPro 2010
 . Intel i740
 . Macronix 86250, 86251
 . Matrox MGA Millennium, MGA Millennium II, MGA Mystique
 . Matrox MGA Mystique 220, MGA G100, MGA G200, MGA-G400
 . Philips 9710, 9712
 . Rendition Verite V1000, Verite V2100/V2200
 . S3 Vision 864, Vision 964, Vision 868, Vision 968, Trio32, Trio64
 . S3 Trio64V+, Trio64UV+, Trio64V2/DX, Aurora64V+, Virge, Virge/DX/GX
 . S3 Virge/VX, Virge/GX2, Virge/MX, Trio3D, Trio3D2x, Savage3D
 . S3 Savage4
 . Sigma Designs RealMagic 64 GX
 . SiS 6202, 6205, 6215, 5597/5598, 6326, 5595/530
 . Tseng Labs ET6000, ET6100

Note that there are many more chipsets that will work with our 
existing legacy VBE/AF based drivers, that are not included in this 
list. For a complete list of all chipsets supported in our prior 
Windows and DOS products, please visit our web site. We are currently 
in the process of moving all our existing device support code to our 
new SciTech Nucleus device driver architecture. The above list only 
lists those drivers that have been converted, and we won't be 
supporting any chipsets not on the list until those drivers are 
properly converted.  


Changes in BETA 7:
------------------

. Finally fixed the bugs stopping our legacy VBE/AF drivers from 
working! Now SDD/2 should work on just about *any* graphics card, 
using Nucleus for maximum performance on new drivers, and VBE/AF for 
support of legacy cards. Hence we now support even ISA and VLB cards 
all the way back to the old Tseng Labs ET3000 and Trident 8900's!  

. Nailed the nasty bugs causing Watchcat, Process Commander and other 
fullscreen (and PM) applications to crash. Hopefully now all stranges 
crashes in the system with other applications will have been solved.  

. Added extended text modes back into the driver, now that the above 
problems have been solved.  

. Added full Plug and Play monitor detection when SDD/2 loads for the 
first time. This will automatically detect the monitor capabilities 
and filter the list of display modes and refresh rates based on this 
information.  

. Updated the GAMon monitor selection program to be more friendly. If 
you run this program with no command line and a monitor has been 
selected, it now reports the configured monitor information. This can 
be used to determine what SDD/2 automatically detected for your 
monitor via Plug and Play. It also allows you to force certain flags 
on and off, such as DPMS, GTF and 16:9 display modes.  

. Reverted to using hardware default memory clock for Matrox drivers 
to avoid problems with overclocking memory. Our control panel will 
eventually allow the user to overclock their hardware if they wish.  

. Added a new GAMemClk command line program, which allows the user to 
manually tweak the memory clock on their board to achieved maximum 
performance.  

. Added a new GAMode command line program to allow the user to add 
and delete custom display modes and refresh rates to the Nucleus 
driver. Basically this is the Dial-A-Mode command line program.  

. Added support for generating a valid GRADD.MOD file when SDD/2 
loads. This can be used to provide automatic support for Workspace On 
Demand in SDD/2.  

. Fixed centering and refresh for text modes in GACtrl, so that the 
adjusted values are now correctly saved for the drivers.  

. Added support for the Matrox MGA-G400 chipset, as well as 
additional support for 24bpp modes on Matrox Millenium and Millenium 
II boards. Also updated the Millenium and Millenium II support so 
that all high resolution modes are available (up to 1600x1200x32 on 
8Meg boards).  

. Added support for S3 Vision series of chipsets. The drivers are not 
fully QA'ed at this stage, but should work well.  

. Added support for more ATI chipsets, including the Rage Mobility 
and Rage XL/XC chipsets.  

. Updates and fixes for Cirrus Logic drivers, including enabling full 
acceleration for Cirrus Laguna 5465 chipsets.  

--- END OF ANNOUNCEMENT ---




 
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