OS2TV Frequently Asked Questions

By Tim Snape

Setting up your TV is a very personal thing, everybody does it differently. Some like the volume high, some like it low. This makes it very difficult for us to automatically configure the TV for you. Combine that with the many different types of TV signal around the world, plus the many types of PC video controller board the result is an infinite number of possible configuration settings and problems.

In this presentation we describe a number of common faults and bugs plus the solutions to resolve them.

WinCast FAQ Install and setup
Q: What is the current version of the Wincast driver Answer 1.017A beta

Question I have installed the OS/2 WinTV driver and it does not work. Answer You have installed the wrong driver. The WinTV driver supplied by IBM is for a device that was discontinued 2 years ago.

The latest versions of all the Hauppauge OS/2 drivers are currently held here.

Question Which versions of OS/2 are supported by the drivers Answer We can only support the current release of OS/2, although as far as we know the drivers should work with all versions of OS/2 after and including OS/2 1.3

Although the drivers will run under very early versions of OS/2 the supporting MM apps are highly sensitive to the version of the OS.

Question Does the WinCast driver work with the WinTV/PCI card? Answer Both of these cards (the WinCast and the WinTV/PCI) are the same design of board. When we started developing the driver the first board was called the WinCast but as development continued it was renamed WinTV/PCI.

Question Which cards are supported by the WinCast driver: Is the xxxx card supported by the WinTV/PCI driver? Answer The WinCast driver should support all Hauppauge products that use the Brooktree BT848 digitiser chip. Although the driver may successfully install it is unlikely that non-Hauppauge cards will function correctly. This is due to specific information being gathered by the driver from the hardware, and non-Hauppauge hardware does not contain the appropriate chips.

Hauppauge are continually releasing new products with additional functionality, VideoText, Intercast, FM Radio, Teletext, etc. The driver may work with these new boards but all the functionality may not be present. Adding support for new functions is fairly simple, we will endeavour to add support for new boards time and money permitting.

If you have an OEM requirement for any extended functionality we are particularly interested in talking to you.

Trap E or Trap 7
Question

I get Trap 000E or Trap 0007 errors on execution of WTV

Answer

This error is not necessarily something wrong with the driver or WTV. If you have a Matrox Mystique video card then we suggest that you check the version of the BIOS. We know that version 1.4 works fine but there have been reports that upgrading to v1.5 causes the Trap errors.

If you do not have a Mystique video card then we currently have no solution. Email us with details of the video card and the BIOS and driver versions so that we can find commonalities.

WarpTV has a black screen
Question

When I run WarpTV all I see is a black screen, I can hear sound though ?

Answer

WarpTV currently does not support the WinTV/PCI driver and so will not display any images in its window (although the snap shot function will work fine). To view video images we have written a special program called WTV (MMOS2\WTV.EXE) that will support the WinTV/PCI. Start the WTV program with the board type and board number (i.e. WTV WCAST 1).

The toolkit SDK also includes the source code for a simple applet using the DIVE api. The toolkit can be found on our web site here.

We are working on a port of the driver that will use GRADD, when this is complete, WarpTV will work.

WTV has a blue screen
Question

When I start up WTV all I get is a blue screen

Answer

This is a good sign

A blue screen in WTV indicates that the currently active video source is a composite input (either external 1 or SVHS). BUT there is no signal present - it is not plugged in!

Either connect a Composite or SVHS source or select another input source (for example, the Tuner).

WTV has a green screen
Question

When I start up WTV all I get is a green screen

Answer

This is a bad sign

A green screen in WTV indicates that the WinCast hardware is not talking to the driver.

There is no definite solution to this problem at the current time. It is important to check that the hardware is working correctly and so first a check of the capture abilities of the hardware should be made. Open the multimedia setup, go to the appropriate section and perform a capture (CAPTURE tab in one of the WCAST sections). If the capture performs well (i.e. you see a non-black capture) then the hardware is functioning. If the capture is black please contact us.

A non-black capture is good: the driver and the hardware are working to a certain degree. The next step is to check the version of the DIVE.DLL you are using. This file is in the MMOS2\DLL directory and should have properties similar to below:

DIVE.DLL  123679  12-09-95  11:03a

If your DLL is smaller than this or older we suggest trying to locate a newer version. Unfortunately we are unable to help with this (unless someone knows where a new version can be found?) Sometimes updating this DLL solves the problem and the TV image appears; sometimes it doesn't.

When running multimedia setup I get "DosFindFirst" errors
Question

When running multimedia setup I get "DosFindFirst" errors

Answer

Multimedia Setup is looking for the files that map TV Channels to Radio Frequencies, these are referred to as the region files.

Due to copyright reasons we are not able to distribute these region files with the driver. The "DosFindFirst" error indicates that the region files are missing. To obtain these files download the WarpTV ZIP installation file and install WarpTV.

We have requested IBM for permission to include these region files in future distributions of our driver.

The "TV Setup" menu option in WTV doesn't work
Question When I run the WTV app and try and invoke the TV Setup menu option nothing happens. Answer This is a known problem but we have not had time to fix it. The "TV Setup" menu option is intended to launch the multimedia setup pages for the appropriate WinTV/PCI driver. To alter the properties for the driver use the multimedia setup directly.

The frame rate with WTV is very low
Question The frame-rate is very, very low Answer Essentially this is a performance problem.

The way the system works at the current time is to make the WinTV/PCI dump images into the PC memory and then the PC draws the images to the screen using DIVE. Ideally the WinTV/PCI should dump images directly to the video controller, however, for rapid development of the driver this option was rejected.

There are several things that you can try.

In the SDK there is a demonstration program that performs all the same functions as WTV but uses a different timing mechanism. Use a smaller TV window Use a faster PC

We are working on a new version of the driver that uses GRADD, this should relieve this problem.

When I run WTV the mouse does not work
Question When I run WTV the mouse becomes very jerky Answer Like the previous question this is a performance problem.

The way the system works at the current time is to make the WinTV/PCI dump images into the PC memory and then the PC draws the images to the screen using DIVE. Ideally the WinTV/PCI should dump images directly to the video controller, however, for rapid development of the driver this option was rejected.

There are several things that you can try.

In the SDK there is a demonstration program that performs all the same functions as WTV but uses a different timing mechanism. Use a smaller TV window Use a faster PC

We are working on a new version of the driver that uses GRADD, this should relieve this problem.

The mouse is still jerky
Question When I run WTV the mouse is still very jerky Answer Use a different mouse pointer, go to mouse setup and install the default set of mouse pointers.

This appears to be a performance issue with some video controllers. If you use a multicolor complicated mouse shape it appears to slow down DIVE apps drastically.

Thanks to Manfredd at Bigfoot for "pointing" this one out.

My video controller is not in the list
Question My video controller is not in the list reported by the Multimedia Setup notebook. Answer Do not worry, this will have no effect. In future with GRADD support this will become an issue. Right now using DIVE, either your video controller will do DIVE or it won't.

To test if your video controller supports dive, run any of the demo apps written that support dive.