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VIDEO HELP


For problems with your video monitor

You can run New Deal software on a system with Hercules, CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, or selected Super VGA graphics capabilities. The Setup utility will ordinarily select the highest mode it thinks your hardware can handle, unless you have Super VGA. If you have Super VGA, Setup will select regular VGA mode and you will have to manually select the appropriate Super VGA mode.

Changing your video setup

Once you are running your New Deal software, you can change your video selection in Preferences. Or you can change it directly from DOS by typing setup at the DOS prompt in the directory where you installed New Deal. This will take you through the entire setup procedure. Press F10 to get to the list of available video drivers.

Original IBM EGA video cards

Some of the very first EGA cards that came with the IBM PC had only 64K of video memory. New Deal does not support this video adapter in color. Your only options are to run the software in CGA monochrome or purchase an EGA card with at least 256K of video memory.

Color Monitors that only show black and white

If you're using a CGA or MCGA-type video adapter, New Deal will appear only in black and white. Both CGA and MCGA offer monochrome resolution of 640x200 lines and 640x480 respectively, but in color their resolutions both drop to 320x200 lines, too low for New Deal color graphics.

Super VGA Monitors that only work in normal VGA

VESA super VGA is the closest thing to a super VGA standard. If you're not sure what kind of super VGA adapter you have, try the VESA-compatible super VGA driver. If none of the VESA drivers seem to work, the video board itself may not be prepared to utilize super VGA mode. You may be able to fix this by running the setup program that came with your video board. If even then super VGA mode doesn't work, you may need to use standard VGA at 640x480.

Owners of older versions of the software can download a Test VESA driver that supports resolutions up to 1024x768 at 256 colors from our ftp site. The test driver requires a fully compatible VESA video adapter and may not work at all resolutions with all brands of video adapters. On some computers, you can expand compatibility by loading the VESA utility that came with your video adapter.

Additional video drivers that support even higher resolutions are available in the newest versions of New Deal software.

Matrox Mystique

In VESA compatible mode, the Matrox Mystique card uses a random frequency setting (50 Hz or below). Although it creates a nice visual effect, it is counter-productive. The solution is to load the DOS drivers for the video card, even if you use Window 95. Select the monitor to function under DOS mode then add these lines to your NEWDEAL.BAT file, before the line that runs LOADER.
SET MGA=c:\tools\mga\setup\
c:\tools\mga\setup\vbetsr
c:\tools\mga\setup\vbsetup

Orchid Pro IIs

If you're having problems using the Orchid Pro IIs, locate the ORCHDVSA.COM driver, copy it to your hard drive, and run it before you launch New Deal. The driver is included on the disks that come with the video board.

Screen blankers

New Deal is not compatible with most screen blankers. Once they blank the screen, you'll probably have to restart your computer before you can use it again. Disable all screen blanking software before you run New Deal. We have included our own screen savers with this program. To select a screen saver, run Preferences and click on the Lights Out button.

Video problems or "Error in script line 244"

If you see the message "Error in script Line 244," or if your video display is distorted, or if you see the New Deal logo and nothing else, you're probably having video trouble.

New Deal software provides several LOADER.EXE files - one for each supported video device:

LOADERHG.EXE for Hercules
LOADERMC.EXE for mcga
LOADERCG.EXE for cga
LOADEREG.EXE for ega
LOADERVG.EXE for vga

During installation, the installer program renames the correct file for your video type to LOADER.EXE. For example, if you have a VGA monitor, LOADERVG.EXE would be renamed to LOADER.EXE.

On rare occasion, the installer program cannot rename the file and there is an error message such as "Error in script line 244 - error renaming file." If this happens, follow these steps:

  1. Use the Installation Tools option of the install program to install the correct loaderxx.exe file for your video card per the above list.
  2. Rename the file to LOADER.EXE by going to the DOS prompt in the NEWDEAL directory and entering:
    REN LOADERVG.EXE LOADER.EXE
    Substitute the correct LOADERxx.EXE in the place of LOADERVG.EXE if you are using a different video mode.
  3. Check to make sure the GEOS.INI file has the correct driver lines in the [screen 0] section. If there is no [screen 0] section in your GEOS.INI, add the appropriate one to the end of your GEOS.INI file from this list.

    The driver lines for VGA will look like this:

    [screen 0]
    device = VGA 640x480 16 color
    driver = Standard VGA Driver
    For a Hercules-compatible adapter, use:
    [screen 0]
    device = Hercules HGC Compatible: 720 x 348 Mono
    driver = Hercules Monochrome Driver
    For an EGA-compatible adapter, use:
    [screen 0]
    device = EGA: 640x350 16­color
    driver = EGA Driver
    For a CGA-compatible adapter, use:
    [screen 0]
    device = CGA: Compatible: 640x200 Mono
    driver = CGA Driver
    For an IBM-MCGA adapter, use:
    [screen 0]
    device = IBM MCGA: 640x480 Mono
    driver = MCGA Driver
Once your New Deal software is up and running, you can launch Preferences and use the video module to change your video display type.
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