Arca Noae licenses source code for SNAP Graphics for OS/2

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi.

I'm very happy for this news.

SNAP is a video driver that I keep using till today on OS/2-eCS and this is a good news. I really hope to see this drive to came out.
But I'm hoping that later it can be improved in two things that sounds to be very basic for other OSes, but not for us.
1) The ability to switch resolution without rebooting.
2) The ability to connect a project/external monitor and that it will work without rebooting.

And I don't want to get greedy but I also want to dream away. I really hope that someday they also think to implement expanded desktops on OS/2 on modern video chipsets and that you can have several displays and select how it will be expanded or duplicated.

I think that one of the good things of Windows was to implement "OS Key + P" to switch the projection mode:



I wish Arca Noae good luck with this driver.

Regards

[Dave Yeo]

1) The ability to switch resolution without rebooting.

Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought that IBM attempted to implement this in the Warp 4 beta and it was just too hard to do in a non-buggy manner as the whole system has to readjust to the different resolution.

[Fahrvenugen]

Yes, I seem to recall that switching resolutions without a reboot is something that PM does not support, and would take a major rewrite of various portions of PM to make it happen (not to mention that this might make various apps stop working).

I could be wrong, but if my memory is correct then it is unlikely to happen regardless of who has the rights to the driver.

But I too am encouraged by this news.  I also am one who continues to use SNAP, I find it works better then just about anything else out there for video.

[rbri]

Great news....
Hope we will see a continuous improvement done in small steps.

[Roderick Klein]

Hi.

I'm very happy for this news.

SNAP is a video driver that I keep using till today on OS/2-eCS and this is a good news. I really hope to see this drive to came out.
But I'm hoping that later it can be improved in two things that sounds to be very basic for other OSes, but not for us.
1) The ability to switch resolution without rebooting.
2) The ability to connect a project/external monitor and that it will work without rebooting.

And I don't want to get greedy but I also want to dream away. I really hope that someday they also think to implement expanded desktops on OS/2 on modern video chipsets and that you can have several displays and select how it will be expanded or duplicated.

I think that one of the good things of Windows was to implement "OS Key + P" to switch the projection mode:



I wish Arca Noae good luck with this driver.

Regards

Years ago I had a discussion with an OS/2 user on an IRC channel (I think it was ten years ago). Aaaah found the ticket on SNAP...

 <Ltning> lou: some very early Trident drivers were able to change
resolution 'on-the-fly' in os2 2.x <Ltning> lou: I suppose they
incorporated so much of the GRE in their driver that it was possible
<Ltning> I still suspect IBM was very much involved with that driver -
judging from how the os2 support hotline kept telling me to get such a
card <MrWizard?> Trident also had HW panning and scrolling
<MrWizard?> virtual screen stuff <MrWizard?> POS card with great
drivers :-P

<lou> Ltning: that is even possible today <Ltning> lou: you mean PM
can be killed and restarted?? <Ltning> then why the HELL hasn't anyone
done that?? <lou> Ltning: yes. requires a bit of tweaking. seen
customers doing that.

But so far this has yet be confirmed what is written above if anybody has been able to get this to work.

Roderick

[Pete]

Hi All

I seem to recall switching resolutions "on the fly" (without rebooting) was possible with a beta build of Scitech Display Doctor - but this ability disappeared in the release build. Sorry, cannot remember which SDD beta build and no longer have any of the SDD builds in my backup system.


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

The question is "how important is switching resolution on the fly or at all in this day when most of us are using LCD monitors that are designed for one resolution?"
My wishlist, taking into account the limited manpower available,
(1) Fix the SMP issues such as ensuring MTRRs are set correctly for all CPUs. This one should be easy.
(2) Merge in the fixes and enhancements that Panorama has added to gengradd. Hopefully also fairly easy.
(3) Expand chipset support. This will vary on hardness with some hardware, perhaps ATI, only needing some updating and other hardware being harder but with specs freely available should be doable. Intel would be one example that may be doable.
(4) Really wishing here, hardware opengl support for a few chipsets, probably the ones where specs are freely available. Doubt this will be done.

[Eugene Tucker]

This is great news period that we can get driver support for video cards.

[Eugene Gorbunoff]

About change of resolution,

Better implement such feature:
Vertical flip  (Mirror vertical)

+ This is important for tablet laptops (several Thinkpad laptops, HP, Dell, ..)
+ this feature maybe implemented in current situation

[eirik]

Switching resolution (or even better allow for dual display = lcd screen + projector) is important so that one can use eCS computers for presentations.  On my previous laptop (Thinkpad T43) this worked well with SciTech/Snap, but I think that was an earlier version than 3.18.  I am looking forward to the recovery of these options as that will greatly enhance the value of my eCS installation (and end the days when I have to move presentations/lectures to my Win partition).

So, best of luck with these additions on Snap :-)
Eirik

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Yeah, great news indeed.

I would love to have a real and robust functionality to support the following:

1) multi monitor configurations, 2 LCDs is fine, my Samsung 245T have been impossible to set up, so an updated driver that has the ability to read modern monitor EDID info and configure automatically would be thrilling

2) SMP - as Dave Yeo mentioned, fix some of the pesky problems

3) FineTuning options - give me control over the video hardware so that if I want to speed it up, I can...

[Andi B.]

...my Samsung 245T ...

I've no problem with my 245B here.

Mind I usually set Manufacturer '(Standard monitor types)' and Model 'Unknown monitor' as I never understand why computers think the know better resolution settings and refresh rates than I do. The second monitor is a HP ZR24w which works flawless too. Together 3840x1200 pixel.

On another System I've a Samsung S24C650 which works too. All are set up with 1920x1200.

AFAIK EDID reading did not change since ages. Only new modes where added and some monitors do not sort them in the correct order defined by the standards. But as said above I do not care much about EDID.

FineTuning options

SNAP offers a few options. But mainly to disable some acceleration if it makes problems like the hardware cursor and so on. I do not see how someone can 'speed video up' as SNAP usually switches on all accelerations it supports by default. If you mean overclocking than I fear you've to play Windoze. Such things which decreases stability for no visible reason on OS/2 should have no priority at all on our OS.

For me -
1 priority - support Intel HD-Graphic build into modern processors
2 priority - support all 3 digital outputs of Intel HD-Graphic to use 3 times 1920x1200

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Hi Andi!

...my Samsung 245T ...

I've no problem with my 245B here.

Mind I usually set Manufacturer '(Standard monitor types)' and Model 'Unknown monitor' as I never understand why computers think the know better resolution settings and refresh rates than I do. The second monitor is a HP ZR24w which works flawless too. Together 3840x1200 pixel.

On another System I've a Samsung S24C650 which works too. All are set up with 1920x1200.

AFAIK EDID reading did not change since ages. Only new modes where added and some monitors do not sort them in the correct order defined by the standards. But as said above I do not care much about EDID.

Well, it's been very different experience here. I could not get my 245T to run in 1920x1200 at all until I re-programmed the EDID and removed the horizontal-to-vertical flip screen resolution...my only theory there was that SNAP was somehow picking up that EDID detail and figuring out it was the "final" resolution mode to run it...no matter what else I tried, and believe me, I tried them all, I could not get that native 1920x1200 recognized.

Attempting a 2x245T LCD setup here produced a completely dismal failure...only some ridiculous resolution like 800x600 would even come up...I gave up...got tired of too many reboots and dashed hopes...LOL!

OK...seeing that is works for you, I'd love to see a dump of all SNAP settings you are currently running...can you do that and post?

FineTuning options

SNAP offers a few options. But mainly to disable some acceleration if it makes problems like the hardware cursor and so on. I do not see how someone can 'speed video up' as SNAP usually switches on all accelerations it supports by default. If you mean overclocking than I fear you've to play Windoze. Such things which decreases stability for no visible reason on OS/2 should have no priority at all on our OS.

Alright...I can't argue with that...but what I can argue with is that fact that SNAP by default severely underclocks the ATI Radeon 850 XT PE chipset...so instead of the default core clock of 1180 and memory clock of 540 it simply does a 400/400...now that, I'm sure of it, will slow it down some...and results in a nearly 50% clock speed reduction...so why accept that? If anything, I would imagine sticking to the default clock speeds as per the video card design would bring us the greatest amount of stability.

[Andi B.]

Here are my settings