Windows 95 (2.01)

Name

• WeitekPower Windows95 Display Driver (Release 2.01) June 1996

Availability

• Download from here (Australia)
• Download from ftp.wustl.edu (USA)

Initial Notes

• Claims to support acceleration, DirectDraw, CLPX and DPMS.
• At first it only ran in 256 colour (8 bpp) modes. The 15/16/32 bpp mode caused the screen. It crashed the computer on shutdown and restart, often not saving settings. Did however allow on-the-fly resolution changing in 256 colour mode. Had a small persistent horizontal bar in the centre of the screen. The help file and documentation were improved.

How I Got the 2.01 Drivers Working!

1. Download the Weitek 2.01 drivers using the above URLs.

2. Boot Win95 and change back to the standard VGA mode 640x480x16. Do NOT use the Oak OTI-087 driver, and do NOT use Safe Mode.

3. Go to the \WIN95\INF directory. Remove all the OEM????.INF files which mention Viper or Weitek drivers. These files are from previous attempts to install and reinstall drivers. Make sure you don't accidently remove any that were related to other drivers!

4. Go to the \WIN95\SYSTEM directory. Remove all the old Viper driver files like VIPER.VXD, VIPER.DRV, VIPER_??.DRV, WTK???.VXD etc. Be careful, there is a VIP.VXD I think which is NOT related to the Viper!

5. Create a NEW directory, say C:\VIPER\WIN95 and unzip the new drivers into it.

6. Make sure you have a look at the README.WRI and WTKCPLX.HLP. There is special information for Diamond Viper VLB owners.

7. Go to ControlPanel-Display-ChangeDisplayType. Under the Driver section (not Monitor section), click on the Add New Driver button. Tell it to look at C:\VIPER\WIN95. Click OK.

8. Select the driver appropriate for you, either P9000 or P9100.

9. Make sure you only choose 640x480x256, as this is the only one that boots up correctly first time.

10. Reboot Windows 95.

11. Go to ControlPanel-Display again. There should now be a "Settings" tab as usual, as well as a new "WeitekPower" tab. Go to the "WeitekPower" tab.

12. IMPORTANT! You must DISABLE the "Solid Fills" and "Text Blits" under the Driver Options section. These don't work properly on the 15, 16, and 32 bpp modes.

13. Select what mode you want, and restart Windows 95 again.

Other People's Experiences

• Go here to to see many other people's experiences with the new 2.01 driver and ways to fix some of the problems.

• Torsten says: Make sure you read the README.WRI file that comes with it. There are special notes for Diamond Viper owners. It is probably a good idea to go through the WTKCPLX.HLP too. It discusses similar things to the README.WRI file.

• To get it to work in 65k modes Mark Rosson suggests the following: I figured out that if you disable 'solid fills' and 'text blts' in the driver options section of the weitek power area of display properties it will give you text and will not give you extra color bars. It worked for me anyway. Although I only tried it at 65k colors not at 16mil.