From:	"John S. Fine" <johnfine AT erols DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	FREEBB12.ZIP
Date:	Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:42:24 -0400
Message-ID:	<37CBF7E0.5B55@erols.com>
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

I hope this is the right place to ask, because FreeBE/AF seems to
exist primarily for Allegro.

   I want to start using Allegro and I don't have a VESA driver for
my Tseng ET4000, so I downloaded FREEBB12.ZIP and attempted its
install program.  It crashes.

   On the computer where I want to use it and another computer
that I tried (both running DOS+QEMM) it gives a QEMM error that
indicates a GPF on a PUSHF instruction, with reasonable values
in SS,SP.  I can't see why it would be a GPF.

   In a DOS box in Win NT on the second of those computers (where
it ultimately won't work, but I just was investigating the install
problem), it runs apparently normally, but doesn't seem to install
anything anywhere.

   On both those computers rebooted without QEMM it just hangs.

   On yet another computer with DOS+QEMM, it gives me the typical
(for a DJGPP program) register dump for a page fault and symify
tells me that it is faulting at _read_driver_data+702 called from
_main+35.

   I also tried rebuilding the whole thing from source.  I got many
of those spilled register errors, like those you get in rebuilding
Allegro itself.  I tried fixing them the same way, but just got more
and more of them.  I gave up after a while, since I didn't know how
many more there would be and didn't know what I would get when I was
done.

   Are any of you successfully use FREEBB12?

   Have you worked around these problems, or did they just not happen
to you?

   What is install.exe supposed to do?  What files does it put where,
etc.?

   Should I be using a different version of something (DJGPP, or
CWSDPMI, or Allegro, or FREEBB, or QEMM)?  All these things have
other versions and it isn't clear which can go together.

   Should I be using something else entirely and not FREEBB?
I have a fixed frequency monitor using a Tseng ET4000 chip.  The
monitor has decent support only for 1024x768 (it can't do more
and it does less very badly).  The BIOS will init 1024x768 mode
correctly with the right mode number, but I can't figure out how
to get Allegro to use that.  I don't even know whether FREEBB
would let me use 1024x768 in Allegro if I ever got it to work.
-- 
http://www.erols.com/johnfine/
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/8600/

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