The Software Area

Last updated on June the 4th, 2001.

  • Requests

    If anyone has a DOC, PDF or some other programming manual regarding the following chipsets, which contain info on hardware registers (not just DirectX or any type of 2D/3D/MPEG acceleration) I'd be greatly appreciated, thanks:

    - NVidia chipsets (any one of them)
    - Cirrus Logic CL-GD5320

    Code sources are also accepted, though I prefer the raw material.

  • Test pictures

    I've added this page which contains a number of various pictures which you may use to test your video system setup. The page will take at least a couple of minutes to load due to the number of thumbnails. Enjoy!

  • VGATV for Windows (WinVGATV) driver
    In order to simplify page design and load, all information regarding the Windows version of VGATV will now live on this page.
  • VGATV driver
    And the same goes for the DOS driver. In here you can download the latest driver, read some information regarding the new features and bug fixes and check out the latest compatibility list.
  • Other software
    As you are aware, chipsets supported by VGATV aren't the latest or the greatest news on video chipsets available on the market today. And while there are hardware alternatives to this PC to TV interface, I still believe in my approach, which consists on an external hardware circuit, dedicated at converting the VGA output signal into something acceptable by the receiver hardware such as a TV or video tape recorder, letting the video chipset engine generate a picture timing compatible to either main world TV system, PAL or NTSC.

    Since obviously VGATV isn't anywhere near at supporting every chipset available under the sun, you can however find alternative ways to make your video card produce a picture TV compatible. The 3 main alternatives I am aware of (there might be others, of course) are:

  • Entech's PowerStrip
  • Matrox's Powerdesk driver, and
  • Linux XFree86

    PowerStrip has been around for some time, and I really can't tell when it started allowing the user to configure the CRT controller parameterts, but the version that I was brought to attention, and the latest at this writing, is 3.0.

    As for Matrox, I don't have the least experience, never possessing a video board from them. However, it has been some years I know of their very flexible Windows drivers, which allow the same level of configuration as described above for PowerStrip. This, of course, is only for Matrox video cards.

    Finally, for Linux, you can configure XFree video subsystem software layer to produce any video mode based upon some parameters. Despite my attempts (probably not enough of them) I couldn't get anything done on this subject (ok, I'm dumb, I know :-) but Linux people are generally clever enough to know how to do it. What they may not know is what values to suply to produce a suitable TV compatible video mode.

    And this is where I enter. Based on my experience, I'll supply you with the values you should configure any of the above systems or others, in order to make your video board produce a video mode of your tasting that is also TV compatible.
    You can also already benefit from the knowledge of others. Tomi Engdahl's video pages provide links to Linux configuration, as well as Matrox's. Should be quite useful by themselves.

    Note: Due to to some tricks involved in getting modes with more than 600 lines to work, your software may not allow the necessary level of configuration necessary. The information will be provided, though.

    Here's the link to the page. Hope the tables are understandable. I still haven't added the modeline samples for Linux for you to see how to apply them, or information on using this on PowerStrip.