Picasso96 with S3 Virge under 0S 3.9 problems

[punkpie]

Hiya,

I’m having a problem with the picasso96 software when my s3 virge card under os 3.9.

After installing my Mediator I got an old s3 virge graphics card (which works fine in my pc) and installed it to the top slot.  I installed the mediator software and choose to install picasso96 RTG as I much prefer the rock solid display it gives.

I attached the settings to the board, restarted and select 800*600, 256 from screenmode prefs.  The display on screen was as nice as I hoped until I opened anything in prefs OR a dialog box in which it takes an age to draw the contents to screen.

I used the p96 distro from the 3.9 contibutions folder but have also tried 1.43b but it doesn't make a difference.

The problem seems like it should have a really simple solution and it’s me simply being an idiot  I hope someone can help be out because I’d prefer to use p96 instead of CGX if possible.

Thanks in advance,

Lee

[whabang]

Wasn't there some licensing issues with P96 and Mediator? :-?

[Crumb]

That's very strange... what cpu do you have? how's the memory window configured? Do you have installed any patch?

[punkpie]

I've got a '040 running at 40Mhz with 16mb.  But I dont think that's the issue because if I use CGX it runs fine.

Sorry, I'm unsure what you mean about the memory window.

No patches are installed apart from the ones that come with os 3.9 (bb2).  In fact, it's a fresh install with bb1 and bb2 installed.

Thanks guys.

[magnetic]

Why in the world would you want to run Picass96 over Cybergrafx? CGX are the best drivers for Amigas. Its only good to use Picass96 for Picasso cards any others its just emulating CGX...

magnetic

[punkpie]

I do actually agree that I prefer the CGX drivers but I wa just curious as to why picasso was so slow.  The picasso display is so clear and crisp that I wanted to give it a go for a while.

Lee

[magnetic]

Hmm... let me think


uh Cuz Picasso96 SUX?

[Framiga]

@ Magnetic

 . . .a really "professional" attitude :-(

[punkpie]

OK, yeah, fair enough.  But my point is that I still want to know why it is slow under os 3.9.  I probably will go back to using CGX later but I'd still like to give P96 a try.

:roll:

[magnetic]

FRamiga


I'm joking... but imho CGX4 is much superior...

[Crumb]

@Magnetic:

maybe because CGX drivers for Mediator suck because they aren't accelerated?

And even if he installed CGX4 it will suck anyway because mediator is unsupported and only has that old cgx3 driver.

you sound like a blind fanatic
why don't you simply try to help instead of posting rubbish?


@punkpie:

something must be wrong... mediator p96 virge drivers have acceleration and should be much faster than the old and unsuported CGX driver. Check out the amiga-mediator mailing-list. You can join it too and ask there.

I asked some mediator users that tried the cgx3 driver and they told me that it is damn slow compared to the p96 one, so something is wrong...

The memory window is a jumper you have on the board... it may be in the incorrect position. It's used to define the quantity of memory your Amiga will see without changing the memory bank.

[punkpie]

Thanks a lot.  I totally forgot about the memory window settings on the mediator.  I'll give them a goand see if I have any luck.

Thanks.

[Crusher]

Tested these P96 2.0? :-)

[punkpie]

Thanks for the suggestions.  Still doesn't seem to make a difference though.

I did try the virge driver, from v2.0, and it seems to have made a slight difference but not enough to make it usable.  I even tried the alternative virge driver and the updated rtg.library from the mediator website.

I've discovered something else.  I was attempting to play Napalm through RTG Master but if I select any of the virge modes from the list it locks up.

After I've tested a little further I've discovered that actually opening windows is fast (almost lightning in fact), as is con: output.  It's just displaying the new os3.9 requesters and GUIs that slow down e.g copying a file from one place to another - The copy guage is incredibly slow at loading.

Anyone got any other ideas?

Cheers.

[Crumb]

What settings do you have in PVS (Picasso Varibale Setter)?
You should use Virge.card/chip etc always from the Mediator Archive and overwrite the original Picasso96 ones... use Picasso 2.x always, don't use the 1.x versions.

The only monitor you have in devs/monitors is the Virge one, right?


Try to turn off the caches to see if graphics run at the same speed. If you notice that the graphics are running dead slow maybe it's because the cpu is working doing stuff that should be done by the gfx card or because you have enabled any strange option.

You should have disabled: the "debug" option,

And enabled: disable amiga blitter, planes2fast, keep amiga video 31khz, no planar to chunky blits, blitter...

well, tell us your PVS settings

BTW, I installed a Virge with P96 in a friend's A4000T Mediator without problems.