36 Is my card supported under Windows 95, OS/2, Linux-XFree86, etc?
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This article is from the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video Frequently Asked Questions, by Michael Scott with numerous contributions by others. (v1.0).
36 Is my card supported under Windows 95, OS/2, Linux-XFree86, etc?
In general, all cards provide basic VGA support, and if your card does so you should be able to run just about any operating system at VGA pixel addressabilities. However, 640x480 is not high enough pixel addressability for most GUI's. The best course of action is to contact your card manufacturer to see if they provide drivers for the OS in question. As an alternative, monitoring or posting to pertinent newsgroups should get you a quick answer. For the particular operating system that you wish to use, you have three choices:
1) The best option is to contact your video card vendor and get the latest drivers for your card. Make sure you know the make and model number. Sometimes, the vendor will ask for which chip revision your card is using i.e. A Tseng ET4000w32 card could be the original w32, w32i or w32p. These may be available on-line via ftp or www sites, or may be on a BBS someplace (likely on the other side of the continent). Alternatively, contact the retailer you bought the card from. The big advantage to getting the drivers from the card supplier is that they should take full advantage of the card's capabilities, including using accelerated functions when possible, and providing high pixel addressability and high colour-depth modes.
2) As an alternative, SVGA drivers will likely come with the operating system. If these drivers follow the VESA SVGA standards, and your card does also, you will be able to take advantage of the higher pixel addressability modes your card is capable of. Unfortunately, you will _not_ be able to take advantage of any of the acceleration features of your card, and in many cases you will not have access to the higher colour depths (like 24 bit colour). My experience has been that these drivers tend to be quite stable.
3) Usually, vendors are responsible for supplying drivers for their particular video cards. In many instances, though, the original drivers were written by the chip manufacturer, then supplied to the vendor. In some cases, the chip vendor releases generic drivers for a given chipset. These may be available on an ftp or web site. Such drivers will likely take advantage of acceleration features of the chipset, but may not know about some particular features of your model of card.
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