Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

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leilei
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Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by leilei »

I recall around 93-94 this would smoothly draw from top down as the OS loads and would take a few seconds on a slow 486SX-33, in PCem it appears instantly even on 386SX VGA systems.
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omarsis81
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by omarsis81 »

Maybe because the slowness is due to the HDD reading (the slpash image is a big BMP file iirc) and the VGA has nothing to do here
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ruben_balea
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by ruben_balea »

This could be altered because on Windows 3.x VGALOGO.LGO contains the code to display VGALOGO.RLE and it's not the same code on all drivers/resolutions/versions possibly having different splash effects

WIN.COM is not present on setup disks :roll: it's made by joining WIN.CNF + VGALOGO.LGO + VGALOGO.RLE
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resle
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by resle »

I remember clearly that it was very random: at times it would appear instantly, other times it would crawl almost line-by-line (Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, AMD 386 40mhz, Oak 77, circa 1992).

Once I switched to a Pentium 100, the line-by-line drawing never happened again.
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ruben_balea
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by ruben_balea »

Well, I've tested the same HD image with PCem with 386DX @ 16 MHz and DOSBox with cpu settings core=normal cputype=386 and PCem appears to be too fast,
but according to those videos of 386 computers the 'progressive' splash would happen only on very very slow machines/video cards and PCem display speed would be quite realistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vKeumawCfU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7UAGiC3uBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwqWO2Lwfp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXq0wDitYg

I think our memories of our old computers are being slightly 'contaminated' due to using too many inaccurate emulators during the last years :?

Using DOSBox @ 25000 cycles it shows instantly like in PCem but Windows loads to desktop in less than one second while in PCem needs a few seconds.
With DOSBox @ 277 cycles I had enough time to take this snapshot:

win31splash.png
win31splash.png (5.94 KiB) Viewed 7130 times
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resle
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by resle »

ruben_balea wrote: Fri 09 Mar, 2018 2:42 am With DOSBox @ 277 cycles I had enough time to take this snapshot:


win31splash.png
And yet, I never ever saw the splash screen being drawn from the bottom to the top.
Wild guess: different adapters = different drivers = different ways to access the framebuffer?
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ruben_balea
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Re: Win3.x splash image appears too fast?

Post by ruben_balea »

[/quote]
And yet, I never ever saw the splash screen being drawn from the bottom to the top.
Wild guess: different adapters = different drivers = different ways to access the framebuffer?
[/quote]

In this case VGALOGO.RLE is a standard BMP file (first two bytes are 'BM') and the image on Windows bitmap files is stored from bottom to top. Other VGALOGO.RLE are stored in plain RLE format.

It must be driver related, my Amstrad PC3386SX can be switched by BIOS setup to run @ 20, 10, 7, 5 and 4 MHz,
and splash image appears already full drawn at 4MHz but at this speed I can see how desktop is being drawn from top to bottom and left to right.
Also I noticed today that while Windows is 3.11 FWG the splash screen is now the one of Windows 3.1,
it could happened only because the last time I used that PC installed Paradise PVGA1A drivers for Windows 3.1
It's a fresh 3.11FGW installation after upgrading to MS-DOS 6.22 to use the full 40MB of the HDD on a single drive letter because previously it had DOS 3.3 which can have partitions only up to 32MB.


This was the orignial splash screen in Spanish and 3.11 FGW before installing those PVGA1A drivers:

Imagen1.png
Imagen1.png (12.02 KiB) Viewed 7081 times
And now I've this other from 3.1 in English:
(I do know it's in English because it says 'Version' and the Spanish one says 'Versión' with accent mark in the o)
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Imagen2.png
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