Topic: Ind-bios Vga Support (Read 900 times)

junkmonkey · « **on:** September 12, 2004, 03:06:00 PM »

Hiya...

I finally felt motivated enough to try patching a more recent BIOS with VGA support. The Pixel8 and LameOne debug ones that have been kicking around for ages don't support funky features like IGR, nor more useful ones like LBA48 - which basically prevented me from using either of them.

I've successfully patched the iND-BiOS 5001 release to support VGA mode with the right cable and a Conexant video encoder - so that's 1.0 -> 1.3 only I'm afraid. It's a bit of a hack really, and it was more of a proof of concept than anything else so it wasn't done very cleanly, but it seems to work.

On my monitor the red signal seems very washed out though - almost gray looking - so I'd appreciate if anyone would give it a go and see how it comes out, it might just be my monitor or cable, or something I've done wrong. I'd especially like to hear how the colour balance works out compared to the previous VGA hacks.

Is anyone out there actually interested in this? I've not had much (any) response from the iND-BiOS guys so I suspect there aren't many. It means I can take my XBOX to a LAN party and not have to drag my TV along, which is all I wanted.

Question: hypothetically, how would this actually get 'out there' for testing?

ideas_man69 · « **Reply #1 on:** September 13, 2004, 05:19:00 PM »

ill give it a go. ive already got a cable made up and ready to try.

IND-Bios · « **Reply #2 on:** September 13, 2004, 07:12:00 PM »

Hi there,

Yes, we are very interested in VGA support, but I do not know of anyone who has contacted us about working on it. Best way to reach us is in #Ind-bios on efnet.

junkmonkey · « **Reply #3 on:** September 14, 2004, 03:34:00 PM »

Cool .. have tried and failed to talk to anyone in #ind-bios who cares.

Anyway, kl0wn and a few other (by the looks of things) people have a copy now, but I don't know if anyone who's actually got a VGA cable has tried it.

The good news is it was my crappy soldering not my crappy coding that caused the red problem, I sat down and re-made my adapter cable and now everything's working great - it's definitely solved my problem. I haven't tried the higher resolution modes, but 480p is working great for me, for a total outlay of £3 (xbox cable) £0 (old monitor cable) and some soldering.

I'm surprised so many people go with expensive VGA converters...

heinrich · « **Reply #4 on:** September 14, 2004, 04:56:00 PM »

hmm, Im sure if you said in the channel that were working on it, or did it, a dev would have talked to you.

Statements like, "how is vga support coming" - would be ignored, just as any other questions on future features.

But regardless, now you know...

If you want to work on support "officially", you know how to get in touch, in the meantime, great job on your mod.

I can upload your work to xbins if you would like, just ask me on irc.

NghtShd · « **Reply #5 on:** September 18, 2004, 07:17:00 AM »

junkmonkey,

I just got a chance to try this BIOS last night. It works great. In fact, it works better than the TATX VGA I test. Pretty much everything I tried using TATX VGA turned green. The dash looked fine, but the green tint kicked in after I launched something. The VGA patched ind-bios didn't have that problem. It turns green if I return to the dash by quitting an app or by doing a quick IGR (compatible IGR mode doesn't cause the green), but everything I ran straight from the dahs looked fabulous on my NEC Multisync XP17.

Nice work.

Side note: I noticed that changing the display mode to 720x480 or 1280x720 using the XDK launcher stoped the green tint when using the TATX BIOS.

Dolfhin · « **Reply #6 on:** September 18, 2004, 08:45:00 AM »

junkmonkey · « **Reply #7 on:** September 18, 2004, 01:36:00 PM »

NghtShd · « **Reply #8 on:** September 18, 2004, 06:24:00 PM »

I could set those modes using the XDK launcher. My monitor said it was running at 640x480 and 1024x768 when I chose 720x480 or 1280x720, respectively. So I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but everything looked perfect.

ideas_man69 · « **Reply #9 on:** September 20, 2004, 05:19:00 PM »

good work boys.

wired57 · « **Reply #10 on:** September 22, 2004, 10:33:00 PM »

cept for my sync issues, making it green, it works nicely, going to try the sync spilter again soon

edit
I moved over to a sync splitter figured out why it wasnot working right the first time. However, I get a massive green tint still, if you have any ideas on how to fix it please let me know

This post has been edited by wired57: Sep 23 2004, 09:33 AM

leonardo1958 · « **Reply #11 on:** September 23, 2004, 01:13:00 PM »

Junkmonkey

Do you know what the reason is for the vga bios switching back to green when starting some of the games. Many of them work fine, but some of them turn back
to green after the intro screen.
Is there a working solution to prevent this?

Thanks,

Leonardo

lil killer · « **Reply #12 on:** September 24, 2004, 10:02:00 PM »

Is there a way to make it so that it only switches to VGA mode when it detects a VGA cable. The old VGA bioses did this and it would be cool if this one could do it too.

junkmonkey · « **Reply #13 on:** September 25, 2004, 10:03:00 AM »

lil killer · « **Reply #14 on:** September 25, 2004, 05:24:00 PM »

weird. When I use this bios on a TV, it looks like it has a green screen over everything.

Author Topic: Ind-bios Vga Support (Read 900 times)