How to install a windows NT display driver: Version 4.00.1381.5002 1. Select the start button from the menu bar. 2. Select the Settings option. 3. Select the Control Panel option from within the Settings menu. 4. Select the Display icon from the Control Panel window. 5. Select the Settings tab on the Display Control Panel Applet. 6. Select the Display Type button on the bottom right corner of the Settings Tab. 7. Select the Change button within the Adapter Type box on the Display Type Dialog. 8. Select the Have Disk button on the bottom right corner of the Change Display Dialog. 9.a. If you are installing from a floppy disk, use the OK button at the top right corner of the Install From Disk Dialog to select the new drivers. 9.b. If you are not installing from a floppy disk, use the Browse button at the bottom right corner of the Install From Disk Dialog to select the new drivers. 10. Select the PERMEDIA P2 option on the Change Display Dialog and press the OK button. 11. If a Third-party Drivers Dialog appears, press the Yes button. 12. Press the OK button on the Installing Drivers Dialog. 13. Press the Close button on the Display Type Dialog. 14. Press the Close button at the bottom of the Display Properties Dialog. 15. Press the Yes button on the System Settings Change Dialog. 16. Your system should reboot and come up using the PERMEDIA P2 display drivers. 17. After your system comes up, Press the OK button on the Invalid Display Settings Dialog. 18. Select the desired Color Palette and Desktop Area. 19. Press the Test button on the Settings Tab. a. If you could see the test bitmap properly, then press the Yes button on the Test Mode Dialog b. or if you could not see the test bitmap properly, then press the No button on the Test Mode Dialog. 20. Press the OK button on the Display Properties Dialog. How to uninstall the Glint windows NT display driver: 1. On the Windows NT Driver Library installation disk 2, run the uninstal.exe file. 2. Press the Continue button on the Uninstall Dialog. 3. Press OK on the REBOOT Dialog. 4. Reboot the computer. Resolutions supported by the P2 3D Accelerator Display Driver: Resolution Color Depth Refresh Rates 640x480 8 60,75,85,100 15 60,75,85,100 16 60,75,85,100 32 60,75,85,100 800x600 8 60,75,85,100 15 60,75,85,100 16 60,75,85,100 32 60,75,85,100 1024x768 8 60,75,85,100 15 60,75,85,100 16 60,75,85,100 32 60,75,85,100 1152x870 8 60,75,85,100 15 60,75,85,100 16 60,75,85,100 32 60*,75*,85* 1280x1024 8 60,75,85,100 15 60,75,85,100 16 60,75,85,100 32 60* 1600x1200 8 60,75 15 60*,75* 16 60*,75* * (2D only) - You must select the "Export high-resolution Single Buffer Formats" Option in the Display Control Panel in order to get the 2D only Display modes. GLYDER MAX-2 WINDOWS NT 4.0 DISLPAY PROPERTIES SETTINGS ------------------------------------------------------- GLyder MAX-2 specific variables can be changed in the desktop display settings panel. This can be found by right clicking on the desktop and choosing "Properties". Then click on the 3Dlabs tab to access these settings. This section describes each of the settings in detail. FORCE NEAREST NEIGHBOR FILTERING Setting this check box will ensure that OpenGL only performs nearest neighbor texturing operations. In some applications this can improve performance, at the cost of some visual quality. ENABLE TEXTURE COMPRESSION Setting this check box 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 paletted texture maps. USE HIGH QUALITY TEXTURE MAPPING This applies only to the GLINT 300SX-based original GLyder product. It is grayed out for other products. FORCE HARDWARE TEXTURING This variable is only relevant to the GLINT 500TX-based GLyder/TX and GLyder/MP products. It is grayed for other products. 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. DISABLE FAST CLEAR PLANES This applies only to GLINT 300SX, 500TX, and GLINT MX-based products. It is grayed for other products. DISABLE DELTA This applies only to GLINT 300SX, 500TX, and GLINT MX-based products. It is grayed for other products. DRAW LINE ENDPOINTS This option when set can improve the legibility of text rendered by some applications using stroke fonts, such as Pro/ENGINEER. SYNC DBLBUFFER WITH VBLANK Smooth animation of 3d applications can be achieved by rendering to an off-screen window/desktop sized color buffer and copying or swapping the contents to the displayable front buffer at the completion of each frame. Enabling this option prevents tearing of the display by synchronizing the swap of the back and front buffers to the vertical blank retrace interval of the monitor display. Leave this option unchecked if the highest rendering frame rates of a double buffered application are desired (i.e. not locked to sub-multiples of the current display refresh rate). EXPORT HIGH-RESOLUTION SINGLE BUFFER FORMATS When this box is checked, it will enable the driver to boot at resolutions where only single buffered pixel formats are supported by hardware acceleration (because at higher resolutions, there is not enough video memory to support double buffered formats). By default, this is not enabled and it prevents users from booting into a mode that will result in unaccelerated OpenGL applications that use double buffered modes. This option should be selected by users wishing to run 2D applications at the highest available resolutions and color depths, and should be unchecked to force the card to boot only into 3D-accelerated modes. GAMMA VALUE The gamma correction adjustment affects the entire screen display. The default gamma value is 1.0 and the allowable range of floating point values is 0.3 to 4.0. Any new user-defined value will take effect when the Apply or OK button are selected. BOOT OPTIONS ------------ These options are accessed by clicking on the Boot Options button in the 3Dlabs property tab, within the Display Properties applet. Number of DMA Buffers This defines the number of DMA buffers configured for use by the 3D extension. As each 3D context is created a DMA buffer will be allocated to it. Typically, each 3D application (whether OpenGL or another accelerated 3D API) will use a single context. If all DMA buffers have been allocated then shared memory buffers are used instead. If this variable does not exist or its value is set to zero then use of DMA is disabled. DMA will not be available if the installed GLINT board does not support DMA transfers. In this case an event is logged in the system log file. This can be viewed using the Event Viewer. The installation default is 3. NUMBER OF SUB-BUFFERS This variable describes the number of sections into which a single DMA buffer is divided for use by a 3D application. This is used by interrupt driven DMA to construct a queue of buffers which are to be loaded into GLINT by the DMA interrupt handler. The maximum size of the queue is always 2 less than the number of sub-buffers specified. This is to allow the 3D application to fill one buffer and GLINT to be performing DMA on another buffer. The remainder can be queued. Setting this variable to 2 disables interrupt driven DMA since not enough buffers are available to create a DMA queue. DMA still works but the DMA buffer is split into two parts so that GLINT can load one while the 3D application prepares the other. Setting this variable to zero disables DMA and forces FIFOs to be used. This latter feature is generally used only for comparing performance of DMA and non-DMA operation (without needing a reboot). This variable is read every time a 3D context is created. Thus it is not necessary to reboot the machine for a change to take effect. Changing this variable has no effect on any already running 3D applications. The installation default is 5. This variable can have considerable 3D performance implications. 2 is usually ideal for single-buffered applications and 5 seems well suited to double-buffered applications. SIZE OF DMA BUFFERS (KB) This variable defines the size in bytes of each DMA buffer. Its value will be rounded up to the next system page boundary. The size will be limited to 256KB since this is the maximum size that can be specified to GLINT for a DMA transfer. The installation default is 0x10000 (64KB). The machine must be rebooted for a change in this variable to take effect. USE BIOS PCI BASE ADDRESSES Normally, the NT HAL allocates PCI base addresses for the GLINT card. These O/S-assigned addresses override those which are normally supplied by the PCI BIOS. On some machine configurations these addresses are not valid for the given hardware. In these instances, the base addresses originally configured by the BIOS are often valid and allow the machine to boot. Checking this box causes the BIOS base addresses to be used rather than those configured by NT. In particular, on machines which use the Intel Multi Processor Specification 1.4 (MPS 1.4), there is a bug in the NT HAL for many machines which causes invalid base addresses to be configured. Setting this variable may fix this problem. This box is checked by default. DISABLE PCI DISCONNECT Higher 2D graphics performance can be achieved by using PCI Disconnect, however this feature can sometimes adversely affect the performance of other devices, such as modems and sound cards. Check this option if you are experiencing problems with the performance of other devices. For further information on this option, see the topic Optimizing Performance below EXPORT 'PFD_SUPPORT_GDI' IN SINGLE BUFFER FORMATS EXPORT 'PFD_SUPPORT_GDI' IN DOUBLE BUFFER FORMATS These two check-boxes control whether the PFD_SUPPORT_GDI flags are exported for single buffered and double buffered pixel formats. The default is checked for both. SOFTIMAGE VERSION 3.01 SPECIFIC SUPPORT Version 3.01 of SoftImage requires this to be checked to ensure the correct operation of SoftImage on GLINT 300SX, 500TX, and MX-based boards. This option is grayed for other products. SOFTIMAGE VERSION 3.51/3.7 SPECIFIC SUPPORT Versions 3.51 and 3.7 of SoftImage require this to be checked to ensure the correct operation of SoftImage on GLINT 300SX, 500TX, and MX-based boards. This option is grayed for other products. OPTIMIZING PERFORMANCE ---------------------------------- In the Control Panel / Display applet, under the Symmetric tab, the setting of "Disable PCI Disconnect" is selected (checked) by default. When this option is checked, 100% compatibility with all serial ports and sound cards are guaranteed. Clearing the checkbox for this option will give a 5%-10% performance increase, but may cause data corruption in some serial port or sound card peripherals.