Content by Helmut P. Einfalt, original HERE. Modified by Major Tom.
The MC1608C/11 is a 2 MB
graphics card
capable of driving fixed frequency monitors. It is no suprise
that the
Cornerstone monitors of the time (1993/4) are supported, but
pretty surprisingly
also the 6091 series by IBM.
I tested the card with a
6091-19. This
monitor is based on a 20" Sony Trinitron tube and supports 60
(Mode 1 and
2) or 67 Hz (Mode 3) refresh rates at 1280x1024. The monitor
has a built-in
signal amplifier that allows attaching a second 6091-19 via
the five BNC
out plugs.
Originally, IBM created the
6091-19
to be driven by the ImageAdapter /A (and later the 6091-19i
and the Image-I-Adapter,
the latter offering more ISA standard refresh rates). Since
there are no
drivers for the IA/A and IA/I Adapters beyond Win311 and as
yet no driver
hack is known to make them work under Win9x, the 6091-19 (and
the corresponding
19i) suffer from lack of capable graphics cards.
While there are several brands
of ISA/PCI/AGP
cards capable of delivering the necessary frequency ranges,
the MCA community
was restricted to the use of the ATI Mach32 or the Matrox MGA
adapers,
both of which are fairly rare and are said to call for some
tweaking.
To my great surprise,
Cornerstone's
ImageAccel 1 series has native support for the 6091 series
built in. Selecting
the monitor is done via a set of jumpers in the JP1 position
of the card
(top right corner). Refer to the table below for the
appropriate jumper
settings.
JP1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Display Type: |
|
|
|
|
Autosync |
on |
on |
on |
on |
Cornerstone
Color 19 1 |
off |
on |
off |
on |
IBM 6091-16
and -19i |
on |
on |
off |
on |
IBM 6091-19 |
on |
off |
on |
on |
IBM 6091-23 |
on |
off |
off |
on |
Cornerstone
Color 20/70 2 |
off |
off |
on |
on |
Cornerstone
Color 21/76 3 |
off |
on |
on |
on |
|
1 Not supported for ImageAccel 1280 controller
2 ImageAccel 1600/70 and 1600/76 controllers only
3 ImageAccel 1600/76 controller only
|
Installing the card is a
pretty straightforward
matter, in fact if you install it onto a working NT system,
you'll be through
the whole procedure in half an hour.
I've installed and tested the
card
in a 9595-ALF (486DX-2/50) with 64 MB of RAM, but other
machines would
do as well.
(A) Hardware installation
Step one: Before installing
the card
in the AVE slot (slot 7 -- the only one it will fit), download
the ADF
@80A6.ADF
from here or from Peter
Wendt's site .
(or any other source; there is
*no*
ADF download at Cornerstone's).
Step two: Adjust the jumper
settings
at JP1 to match your 6091 monitor (see table above).
Step three: Provide a Base
Video card
for the ImageAccel in the BVE slot (slot 5). Since one of the
readmes around
states something about known problems with IBM's XGA and XGA/2
adapters
I decided to plug in the short SVGA card that is of no use
anyway...
Attach a monitor to the SVGA
card,
plug in the the ImageAccel (slot 7!) and attach the 6091-19 to
the card.
The 6091-19 sould be set to mode 3 (i.e., to 67 Hz refresh).
(BTW, beware of any attempt to
run
the ImageAccel as standalone-card. Although I found some
documentation
somewhere saying that it *can* provide base VGA, this would
require an
option disk that no one has ever seen. The best I could get
the card to
do was to fill the 6091 screen with a nice huge red square --
optically
pretty, but of somewhat limited use for configuring the
machine...)
Step four: Fire up the engine.
When
the 165 error comes up, run automatic configuration, feed in
the ADF(s)
for the video card(s), reboot and -- presto: you'll have the
nice surprise
of seeing the following message at bootup on *both* the
screens attached:
Settings for the ImageAccel
Display:
Primary or Secondary Adapter <Primary><Secondary>
I/O base address: <2000><2010><4000><4010>
Memory base segment address: <0C0000><0CA000><0CC000><0CE000>
<0D0000><0DA000><0DC000><0DE000>
Interrupt Selection: <IRQ3><IRQ5><IRQ10><IRQ11>
The settings are not critical
as long
as they don't conflict with other settings. For the IRQ I
chose 5, but
that depends on the rest of the machine's setup. If you select
the standard
of <Primary> for the video adapter, you'll see all DOS
based messages
on the 6091. <Secondary> means that you use the
ImageAccel only for
HiRes output (which would require another monitor attached
permantently
to the BVA).
If everything is ok, the next
boot
brings up the following screen message on
"ImageAccel MC1608C/11" plus a
long
serial number, and
"MEM: C000, I/O: 2000,
6091-19"
(B) SOFTWARE INSTALLATION:
Unless you've already a
running installation,
install WinNT 4.0 (workstation in my case).
Keeping the control monitor
attached
to the BVA during installation is a good idea:
There are two weird things you
might
notice:
(1) The DOS (text) based
screen does
*not* fill the whole of the 6091's surface, and,
(2) once you've got past the
basic
DOS/text-based installation sequence of NT, i.e., when NT
pulls up the
blue graphic background, you'll see everything blue in RED. My
IBM 15X
monitor that was attached to the SVGA did behave properly.
Cure: none for (1), and swap
the R
and B BNC plugs at the monitor for (2).
Once NT is up and running **in
16-color
VGA mode** (standard driver for vga-compatible graphics card),
it is time
to feed it the ImageAccel NT 4.0 drivers.
You'll find them here
or at the Cornerstone
site.
Take the ImageAccel 1 NT 4.0
drivers
and download **NT40_100.zip** to your HD.
Make a directory called NT40
and extract
the files into that one. Format a 1.44 floppy and *copy the
whole directory*
onto it. The reason for this move is that the unzipped driver
directory
contains only 1.2 MB of data, but some 140 files, and that you
can't get
into a floppy's root directory. (Don't kick me for this
statement of the
obvious -- it took me over an hour and a couple of formats and
re-formats
of at least three floppies on three different machines before
I found out
why the heck 1.2 MB won't fit on 1.44 MB of free space --
neither NT nor
Win95 are very helpful with their error messages in this
respect...)
The next step is easy --
easier than
reading the following instructions that I copied from the IA
readme:
"If the ImageAccel Windows
NT 4.0
display driver is being installed for the first time, you
must first start
Windows NT in VGA (640x480) mode before proceeding. If an
update installation
without a display/adapter configuration change is being
performed, it is
not necessary to revert back to VGA before installing the
display driver.
If the display/adapter configuration is changing and an
update installation
is being performed, we recommend that you first uninstall
the existing
ImageAccel display driver before proceeding.
(...)
1. Right click on the
desktop and
pick "Properties" to bring up the Display Properties window.
Choose the
"Settings" tab.
2. Select the "Display
Type" button.
A display type dialog box will appear. Select the
"Change..." button in
the "Adapter Type" section of the box.
3. A "Change Display"
dialog box
will open. Select the "Have Disk..." button. A box will
appear indicating
the drive where the Manufacturer's information is located.
Select "OK"
or change to the drive letter and path where the ImageAccel
NT release
resides.
4. A list of ImageAccel
displays
picks will appear. Select the appropriate controller with
display or timing
and press the "OK" button. The system will inform you that
it will be changing
its configuration. Click "Yes".
5. The operating system
will inform
you the display settings have been changed and that for the
changes to
take effect, Windows NT should be restarted. You can restart
the system
at that time or later, depending on your needs.
NOTE: Selecting an
inappropriate
display type may distort the screen or bring up the VGA
display driver
instead. If this occurs, simply reinstall the correct
display if the display
can be read, otherwise, select the VGA display from the boot
menu upon
powering up the system.
6. Restart Windows NT.
NOTE: After restarting
Windows NT,
a Windows NT "Invalid Display Settings" dialog box will
appear with the
following information: "A new graphics driver has been
installed. The old
default display resolution has been temporarily used by the
system. Use
the display option in the Windows NT Control Panel to select
your preferred
Display Resolution." This message is a misleading message
generated by
the operating system. Select OK to ignore the message and
continue.
7.Choose your desired
settings through
the Windows NT Display Properties "Settings" and
"ImageAccel" Pages. Some
changes to the Control Panel default settings require you to
restart Windows
before the changes take effect.
NOTE: (...) Network NT
Installation
is not supported. "
While the machine is
re-starting after
step 7, you'll notice that the screen goes back to normal
again, or, if
you *did* swap the R for the B BNC-plug, it will come up with
a **red**
startup screen. Simply change the plugs again, and there you
are... From
now on, the second monitor attached to the SVGA will stop
displaying as
soon as the blue start screen comes up -- but then -- who
needs a lowly
15-incher if he can have the 6091-19 ?
One more funny thing: the
ImageAccel
driver provides cursor color settings -- don't be scared if
you cursor
comes up in a bright yellow -- there is nothing wrong with it.
Just change
the settings in the Display Properties > ImageAccel menu
(and reboot once
more...).
And there we are: As far as
the ImageAccel
is concerned, installation is as easy as anything. And you end
up with
a wonderful combo of a working NT on a 9595 and a nice huuge
display.
Now, if Cornerstone *just*
could make
an upgrade kit to 4 MB (and true color....)
Thanks to Ulrich Trunk for
donating
the card that revived the 6091-19.
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