Viper PCI/Viper VLB Win95 Preliminary Drivers 
        Release Notes - 11 April, 1995

Updates:
         5 Apr 95       - Initial pre-release
	 6 Apr 95	- Fixed palette bugaboo w/ dos boxes in Viper.VxD
        11 Apr 95       - Fixed problem w/ 'Shutdown to MSDOS mode'
        12 Apr 95       - Fixed a DIB problem (improved AVI performance)
        13 Apr 95       - Found the b440 DOS window problem in the VXD.


Note: You may need to edit WIN.INI, and remove the [DrawDib] section to
        allow Video for Windows to retest the new driver and optimize itself.
        This hopefully will be done automatically in a later version...

(See 'Known Problems' at end...)


These drivers support 256 colors, 32768 colors, and 16777216 colors.
These drivers support 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x900, and 1280x1024


		256	32k	16M
		====================
640x480		1MB	1MB	2MB
800x600		1MB	1MB	2MB
1024x768	1MB	2MB	-na-
1152x900	2MB	-na-	-na-
1280x1024	2MB	-na-	-na-


This is a very unofficial release!  These drivers have not yet receieved 
thorough application testing.  They _have_ been 'smoke tested' w/ the DCT.

Install using Win95 Display Properties/Settings/Change Driver/Have Disk...

You still need a VIPER.INI file (created by VPRMODE) stored in c:\viper or another 
	path pointed to by SET VIPERPATH=



Test Matrix:  (these tests were all done w/ the 5Apr version, later versions
              are just being tested on PCI versions, unless another VLB
              specific problem crops up)...

	board/mem/version	Bios tested	256	32k	16M
	===========================================================
	Viper PCI 2MB A7	3.10		x	x	x
	Viper PCI 2MB B2	3.10		x	x	x
	Viper VLB 2MB E4	3.13		x	x	x
	Viper VLB 2MB D3	2.04		x	x	x
	Viper VLB 2MB A7	1.12		x	x	x



Known Problems:

    *   At 16bpp (32k colors) or 32bpp (16M colors), stretched .AVI files are
        rather slow (many frames dropped).  Also, at 32k and 16M colors,
        AVI files in "MS Video One" format perform poorly.

    *   Color/Animated cursors are NOT supported.  Sorry!

    *	These drivers have not undergone much application
        compatibility testing yet.

    *	Bitblt performance is only optimized for 256 color modes.

    *	DO NOT TRY TO RUN THE OLD DIAMOND VIPER CONTROL PANEL!  IT WILL GPF!
        it will be automatically removed by the installation once I figure
        out how to do this...

    *	Do not try to use the DPMI Diamond power management application
        either, it won't work right.

    *   32k color color mode has some drawing problems (noteably,
        the copying files status display has a magenta background...)


email bug reports to pierce@diamondmm.com  Please check the above list
        before reporting problems, I know about these already...


please specify the Viper board revision, bios version, color depth, win95
        build and anything else that might be important.  



John R Pierce
Diamond Multimedia Systems
pierce@diamondmm.com
