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Headland Technologies Video7 VGA 1024i in Windows 3.1

thatvhstapeguythatvhstapeguy
edited January 2017 in Hardware
Last year I acquired an HP Vectra QS/20. It's from March 1991, and runs very well. I've poked around a bit inside the system and I figured out what graphics card it has. It is the Video7 1024i. I fortunately found the drivers for it on WinWorld, and the DOS drivers work perfectly. However, the Windows drivers are for Windows/286 and Windows/386, essentially Windows 2. I would like to have higher resolution in Windows 3.1, but the disks do not have an OEMSETUP.INF file. I tried manually adding the drivers to SYSTEM.INI, but then Windows refuses to start. Is there any way possible to load the drivers into 3.1, or should I just suck it up and take 640x480x16 as it already is?

Comments

  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Microsoft Windows 3.1 bundles video drivers for Video 7 cards, that includes the 1024i. No extra driver disk is needed. Just select "Video 7" and the resolution you want from Windows Setup.

    BTW, nice find. :cool: The 1024i is an excellent card.
  • thatvhstapeguythatvhstapeguy
    I forgot to mention that the card only currently has 256K. The drivers for Windows are for at least 512K, so I think what I'll do (when I get around to it) is find some more DRAM chips and upgrade the card to 512K. (Half the screen was acting up when I selected 256 colors.)

    Thank you for your help!
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Ah, right. There is really no way around that. To get 256 color modes in 640*480 or higher you must have 512k. Even DOS programs that support Video 7 will probably expect 512k.

    But with the full amount, it works very well. A lot of other cards would, for example, crap themselves if you flipped back and forth between graphics-mode DOS programs inside Windows 3.1, but the Video 7 would work flawlessly.

    Also, the Video 7 has an excellent CGA compatiblity mode. Either selectable through a switch or through the DOS utility, it lets you run some CGA software that normally misbehaves on VGA. It even has a software compatiblity mode that emulates Hercules Monographics.
  • ibmpc5150ibmpc5150
    Most of early VGA card (1987-1990) has 256KB VRAM.
    My first VGA (SVGA) was based on Tseng ET-3000 (512KB) VRAM.

    Your Video card may support 640x480 (256) 800x600 (16).
    Of course no 1024x768 with 256KB VRAM.

    I'm sure it works on Windows 3.1 (800x16 16 colors or 640x480 256 colors)
    I can test it on Windows 3.1 (PCEM or 86BOX) if you can dump your Video BIOS file via DEBUG.
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