Symmetric P2 Readme File. Version 4.10.01.5013 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DRIVER INSTALLATION If you have reinstalled Windows 95 on your computer, and are not using the prebuild load that came with your computer, skip to the section called "OSR1 Win95 Driver Installation". If you are installing the drivers on a system with the pre-installed operating system that came on your computer, follow these steps: OSR2 Win95 Driver Installation ***** IMPORTANT! If at any time during installation you get an error message that you do not have administrator rights, check with your network aministrator.***** 1. Select and Click the "Start" button on the desk top menu bar. 2. Select the "Settings" option. 3. Select and Click on the "Control Panel" option. 4. Double click on the "Display" icon to bring up Display Properties control panel. 5. Select and Click the "Settings" tab in Display Properties control panel. 6. Select and Click the "Advanced Properties" button. This will bring up the Advanced Display Properties control panel. 7. Select the Adapter tab in the Advanced Display Properties control panel (It is normally the default tab at pop-up). 8. Select the "Change" button. This will bring up the Select Device control panel. 10. Select the "Have Disk" button. This will bring up the Install From Disk dialog box. 11. In the Install From Disk dialog box either install from floppy disks by inserting Disk 1 and Click on "OK" or select "Browse" and in the Open dialog box specify the drive letter and the directory that contains the GLyder/TX drivers. (Example: D:\Win95\) 10. Once the path to the drivers has been selected, select the "DISPOEM.INF" file and then click on "OK". 11. Then in the Install From Disk dialog box click on "OK". 12. Select Device control panel will reappear. Select "Show All Devices" check box to view all of the available manufacturers' listings. 13. Under Models heading, three options will appear. Click on "GLINT Racer Acclerator" to select it for your GLyder/TX card. After you have made your selection, click "OK" and the Advanced Display Properties control panel will reappear. 14. Click on the "Apply" button in the Advanced Display Properties control panel. 15. Click on the "OK" button in the Advanced Display Properties control panel. 16. Click on the "Apply" or "OK" button in the Display Properties control panel. 17 . Systems Settings Change dialog box will prompt you to restart your computer. Click on "Yes". Computer will restart with new drivers in effect. (To check your installation or version of the current driver installed, follow these instructions) 1. Right click on "My Computer" Icon on Desktop. 2. From the menu select and click on "Properties". 3. The Systems Properties control panel select the "Device Manager" tab. 4. Double click on "Display Adaptors". 5. The current display adapter will be displayed in the device tree. Click on it and then select and click on the "Properties" button. 6. The Properties control panel will come up and then select the "Driver" tab. 7. Then click on the "Driver File Details" button. This will bring up the Driver File Details box with the information on the currently installed driver. The File Version displayed should match what you installed. If you are installing the drivers on a system that you have reinstalled Windows 95, follow these steps: OSR1 Win95 Driver Installation 1. Select the Start button on the desk top menu bar. 2. Select the Settings option. 3. Select the Control Panel option. 4. Double click on the Display icon. 5. Select the Settings tab. 6. Select the Display Type button. 7. Select the Change button in the Adapter Type section. (If you get an error message saying that you do not have administrator rights, check with your network administrator.) 8. Select the Have Disk button. 9. Select Browse and choose the locations where the drivers are on your hard disk. 10. Select the OK button to get back to the Change Display dialog. 11. Select the OK button to install the display drivers. 12. Select the OK button on the Display Properties Dialog. 13. Reboot the machine for the display drivers to take effect. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to uninstall the P2 Display Driver: 1. Change to a Standard VGA Display Driver in the Display Properties Dialog using steps 1-5 of the install procedure, and selecting 'Show all devices' and then selecting 'Standard Display Types'. 2. On the 3DLabs Display Driver Disk2, run the uninstall.exe file. 3. Press the Continue button on the Uninstall Dialog. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resolutions supported by the P2 3D Accelerator Display Driver: Resolution Color Depth Refresh Rates 640x480 8 60,70,72,75,85,100 16 60,70,72,75,85,100 32 60,70,72,75,85,100 800x600 8 60,70,72,75,85,100 16 60,70,72,75,85,100 32 60,70,72,75,85,100 1024x768 8 60,70,72,75,85,100 16 60,70,72,75,85,100 32 60,70,72,75,85,100 1152x870 8 60,70,72,75,85 16 60,70,72,75,85 32 60,70,72,75,85 1280x1024 8 60,70,72,75,85 16 60,70,72,75,85 32 60,70,72,75 1600x1200 8 60,65,70,72,75 16 60,65,70,72,75 Under Windows 95 OSR1, the only refresh rates that are available are 60, 72, 75, 85, and MAX. GLYDER MAX-2 WINDOWS 95 CONTROL PANEL APPLET -------------------------------------------- PERMEDIA-2 specific variables can be changed in three tabs on the desktop display settings panel. This can be found by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing "Properties". In this release all panels have a 'Default Settings' option. To return to the default settings, simply click on the "Default Settings" button. There are three tabs in the Display Properties page: Permedia Setup, Permedia Direct3D, and Permedia OpenGL. The choices on each of these property tabs are described in the following three sections. PERMEDIA Setup Page ------------------- MAX REFRESH Controls the maximum refresh rate that the drivers will allow. This should be left at the default value unless your monitor has specific requirements. Under Windows 95 OSR2 - the refresh rate can be changed in the Display Properties dialog. Under the Settings tab, there is a button for Advanced Properties. This will bring up the Advanced Display Properties dialog. Under the Refresh Rate section, is a pull-down menu of all the refresh rates you can choose from for the current settings you are at. DMA BUFFERS Controls the number of DMA buffers that the drivers will allocate. Setting 0 here disables DMA. This value should be left at the default (2) unless your application or system has other specific requirements. DMA BUFFER SIZE Controls the size of each DMA buffer. This value should be left at the default (64) unless your application has other specific requirements. FONT CACHE Controls the amount of memory allocated for the font cache. Setting 0 here disables font caching. This value should be left at the default (200) unless your application has other specific requirements. INTERRUPT ENABLE Enables interrupts for DMA operations. For IBM Intellistation MPro machines, his value should be left at the default (unchecked). OFFSCREEN BITMAPS Enables the use of Offscreen bitmaps for faster display driver performance. This value should be left at the default (checked) for optimal performance. DISABLE DELTA Checking this box disables the Delta polygon setup core and can be used for performance characterization. This value should be left at the default (unchecked) for optimal performance. This opion is grayed out for the Permedia boards. PERMEDIA Direct3D Page ---------------------- SELECTIVE PATCHING This scheme will patch textures if they are loaded onto the card using the Direct3D ALLOC_ON_LOAD scheme. In general patching textures improves performance. This value should be left at the default (checked) for optimal performance. ALWAYS PATCH This scheme will always patch textures, whether or not they are stored using the ALLOC_ON_LOAD scheme. If checked, this will improve performance over SELECTIVE PATCHING, but may cause incorrect rendering in applications that require rendering to textured surfaces without compression. The default for this box is unchecked. This box may be checked by the user to realize optimal performance, but should be unchecked if texture artifacting occurs in any applications. NEVER PATCH Never patches textures. This mode is not recommended. 8BIT RGB TEXTURES Direct3D Retained mode chooses the texture format that best matches the original image file. This can cause applications to use 8Bit RGB textures when a higher resolution texture format would be better. For this reason 8Bit RGB textures are disabled by default. This check box enables 8Bit RGB textures. TRUE COLOR TEXTURES Enables the use of True Color textures in the Direct3D HAL driver. This option will use a lot of video memory if it is picked by a Direct3D application, but will maximize the quality of the display. DON'T FORCE COPYMODE Allows the Direct3D driver to use texture modulation. When turned off it allows the original color of the texture map to be seen. This value should be left at the default (checked) for optimal performance. DISABLE DIRECT3D HAL Disables hardware 3D acceleration. This is not recommended, except for cases where a Direct3D driver bug is suspected. Turning hardware acceleration off allows testing with the Microsoft standard driver to determine if the problem is in the hardware driver or in the application. The default value (unchecked) is recommended for optimal performance. NO VBLANK WAIT Stops the DirectDraw HAL driver from waiting for Video Blanking signals before it page flips. This keeps full screen applications from waiting for the Video Blanking interval and allows them to run at full speed. This may result in some "tearing" of the images on the screen. For optimal performance, check this box. For tear-free images with the highest image quality in full-screen applications, uncheck this box. FILTER STRETCHING Filters all stretched blit operations. This should be off by default as it will slow stretch blit performance. (This is useful for real time anti-aliasing applications that wish to stretch large images down with filtering) PERMEDIA OpenGL Page -------------------- DYNAMIC BUFFER OPTION - NUMBER OF SUB-BUFFERS Each DMA buffer is sub-divided into sub-buffers which are used in conjunction with a DMA mechanism to reduce latency in the system.. This is to allow the 3D application to fill one buffer and PERMEDIA to be performing DMA on another buffer. Setting this variable to zero disables DMA and forces FIFOs to be used. Interrupt driven DMA is currently not supported in this release (the case when the number of sub-buffers is greater than 2 which allows a DMA interrupt handler to process the remaining queue of buffers). DRAW LINE ENDPOINTS This option when set can improve the legibility of text rendered by some applications using stroke fonts (for example, Pro/ENGINEER.) FORCE NEAREST NEIGHBOR TEXTURING Setting this registry value will ensure that OpenGL only performs nearest neighbor texturing operations. In some applications this can improve performance, at the cost of some visual quality. The default value (unchecked) is recommended for better visual quality. ENABLE TEXTURE COMPRESSION Setting this registry value will force OpenGL to shrink 2D texture maps as they are loaded to reduce the memory needed to store them. Texture maps are halved in both x and y dimensions so that they require a quarter of the original memory. The setting has no effect on 1D or paletized texture maps. PERSPECTIVE CORRECTION This variable is only relevant to PERMEDIA. The accuracy of the perspective-correction divide performed during textured rendering can be varied on PERMEDIA. The default option, Force Nicest, enforces the most accurate divide, resulting in the best image quality. The Force Fastest option switches to a reduced accuracy divide, which results in best performance at the cost of lower image quality. The third option gives control of the divide accuracy to OpenGL applications through the API function glHint. A smart application can vary the divide accuracy used on a per primitive basis, since primitives that are heavily "perspected" require higher accuracy for good image quality than those that are not.