Dos 6.22 Startup Resolution

[Padawg]

Hi everyone, I just put together a Dos 6.22 only machine.. I used an old Packard Bell Legend Supreme with a P233 MX cpu with onboard S3 Virge video, 24 megs ram and I put in a Quantum 20 gig harddrive. The system runs fine just its very annoying that it boots up to a 720 x 400 screen resolution at the dos prompt. I always thought Dos booted to an 640 x 480 screen tho it has been quite awhile since my DOS machine days. I have been trying all kinds of things, I even got some prgs to put the screen into a better mode but when I run prgs that use the default screen resolution it reverts back to that annoying 720 x 400.. If the game/prg runs in 640 x 480 that works fine.. it looks great and plays/runs fine. What I want to know is why I am booting up to a 720 x 400 screen. Is this correct or is this because its a newer machine ( it originally had Win 95 installed on it before I formated and installed DOS)

I can even bypass the config.sys and autoexec.bat and still at the prompt its 720 x 400. I installed Doom 1 and it doesn't look too good in 720 x 400, there is noway to run it in anything else.. this is what I mean by annoying and should my machine be defaulting to 640 x 480?

OH BTW.. when the machine POSTS the initial screen is in 640 x 480 then as soon as you see 'Loading OS or Ms dos' it reverts to 720 x 400.
The Video is PCI also.

Thanks

 

[Trixter]

I'm guessing the only reason you're even able to detect 720x400 is because you've got an LCD monitor hooked up and you don't like the way it looks. Did I guess right?

720x400 is 80x25 textmode with the standard VGA 9x16 font. This is normal and always has been. There is little you can do to change it unless you run a program after the machine boots that switches the dot clock to EGA specs but with the same VGA font -- this will actually get you a 90x25 screen so the BIOS and ANSI and other stuff will need to be hooked/updated... not trivial.

There was a great program to control this stuff called UltraVision, which twisted VGA into all sorts of font and row/column combinations. If you find it, it will most definitely help you once the system is booted. I found a reference to one place at http://usuarios.lycos.es/scratchupload/ but a google search for "ultravision abandonware" might net it for you as well.

Graphics modes, such as 320x200 used by Doom, cannot easily be altered to be the aspect ratio you desire. You'll have to eat those.

 

[Padawg]

Well.. actually I have a 17in Dell monitor hooked up to the machine. It just a plain old monitor..

Thanks for your input..

 

[Trixter]

Well.. actually I have a 17in Dell monitor hooked up to the machine. It just a plain old monitor..

Thanks for your input..

How were you able to determine 720x400 if you just have an analog monitor hooked up? There aren't many people who can do that... does it display weird, flicker, what?

If you can't find UltraVision and still want it, let me know.

 

[Mike Chambers]

How were you able to determine 720x400 if you just have an analog monitor hooked up? There aren't many people who can do that... does it display weird, flicker, what?

If you can't find UltraVision and still want it, let me know.

i've seen a few (in fact i have one sitting around) CRT monitors that tell you the resolution when you go into the OSD menu.

 

[Padawg]

When you push the menu button that screen shows you the resolution your running in.. and yes.. it does kinda flicker and shake a bit.. just plain annoying.

I am still looking for that prg.. I may need to get it from you if possible..

Thanks

 

[michal]

Hi

Here's a little command line util you may want to play a bit with:

http://tm.adoxa.cjb.net/

While I don't see a switch to explicitly set the horizontal res to 640, I'm pretty sure most modes that use a font smaller than 16px will display at 640x. Other than that you can directly trigger BIOS modes and you'll also find 640x modes there. Just try it out.

In my case - a compaq laptop - I have an exactly opposite problem: there's no 720x mode, all text modes display at 640x, so for example a 90chr wide mode isn't possible (I tried some program called 'Adlib Tracker' that utilizes this mode and couldn't quite use it)

 

[Frankie]

In my experience, using anything bigger then my 14” monitor never looked good when playing 320x200 games or running text mode…

 

[michal]

In my experience, using anything bigger then my 14” monitor never looked good when playing 320x200 games or running text mode…

What are You saying? Text mode looks great on everything CRT (and only sometimes on LCD - like, very small LCD, because on a bigger one it's usually poorly scaled or just... too sharp .

I enjoy text mode very much on my Sony W900 (a 24" panoramic 16:10 CRT - note the aspect ratio, it's 1:1 to the 640x400 textmode res). It has a great old-school feeling and the resolution is just fine - after all, people are watching 640x NTSC on their TV's daily, with no complaints (in fact many of them are even convinced it's HD)...

As to 320x200, it doesn't look good on anything bigger than a PDA or cellphone IMO...