To make installing your video card easier and more intuitive, Diamond has provided an installation utility that will run automatically when you insert the Diamond SuperCD. From the SuperCD, you can learn more about Diamond and its products, install software drivers, and read on-line product manuals.
In order to use your board in your PC it is necessary to install a package of basic programs, regardless of the operating system you use.
Installing Windows NT Software Installing Windows® 95 Software
Modifying Configuration Settings 3D-Win BigFocus
Software Application Notes
Installing Windows NT Software
- Put the SuperCD into your CD drive and start the installation as follows:
- Windows NT 3.5x: Start the Program Manager, select File - Run , then START.EXE from the root directory of the CD.
Windows NT 4.0: Click the START button in the task bar, select the option Run and then select START.EXE from the root directory of the CD.
- Choose English as your language for the installation.
- Click the Start Installation button.
- If necessary, select the hardware for which you wish to install; this is displayed in the Product drop-down list. The installation program usually recognizes your hardware automatically.
- Click the Next button.
- If desired, enter a path to which the software will be installed.
- Click the button corresponding to the type of installation you want. If you select Custom, a list of software components will be displayed. Click the check boxes to specify the components you want to install.
- A README file will be displayed. Please read this file!
- After you have read the README, click Next.
- When prompted to restart your computer, choose Yes.
Windows NT 3.5x
- Select Display in the Control Panel window. Set the resolution, color depth, and refresh rate that best suit your requirements and the performance of your monitor.
- Click OK.
Windows NT 4.0
- Click Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Settings, or click with the right mouse button on the Windows desktop, select Properties and Settings. Set the resolution, color depth, and refresh rate that best suit your requirements and your monitor's performance.
- Click OK.
Windows NT 3.5x / Windows NT 4.0
- The basic software is now installed. In Windows NT 3.5x you can see the new FIRE GL 1000 icon in the Control Panel window.
To install and configure the drivers you need for the different operating systems and applications you are using, please read the relevant sections that follow.
Modifying Configuration Settings 3D-Win BigFocus
Installing Windows® 95 Software
Put the SuperCD into your CD drive and start the installation as follows:
- In the automatically displayed New Hardware Found menu, select
Driver from disk provided by hardware manufacturer. Click OK.
- Enter X:\DRIVERS\ as source of the files and click on OK, where "X" is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive. For example, if your CD-ROM is drive D, you would type D:\Drivers. The installation program will automatically copy all the necessary files onto your hard disk.
- Restart the system.
- The New Hardware Found menu now displays a message that a Co-processor CPU was detected. Again select Driver from disk provided by hardware manufacturer and click OK.
- Enter X:\DRIVERS\ as source of the files and click OK. When the message about resources for a 'Delta Geometry Processor' is displayed, click Next to complete the driver installation.
- When prompted to restart your computer, choose Yes.
Note: To confirm a complete and successful driver installation you may check the Device Manager for the following entries:
- Computer: 3D Accelerator and Delta Geometry Processor
- Graphic Cards: Fire GL 1000
- Click Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Settings, or click with the right mouse button on the Windows desktop, select Properties and Settings. Set the resolution, and color depth rate that best suit your requirements and the performance of your monitor.
- Click on OK.
The basic software is now installed. To install and configure the drivers you need for the different operating systems and applications you are using, please read the relevant sections that follow.
Modifying Configuration Settings 3D-Win BigFocus
Modifying Configuration Settings
If you experience problems with your application, or if you want to try to optimize the performance of your system on specific applications, you may modify the Configuration Settings. Refer to Configuration Parameters for more details.
Notes: Only experienced users should modify the Configuration settings.
The Configuration default settings typically require modification only for
- diagnostic purposes
- fine-tuning a specific application/system configuration
- specific settings recommended by your hardware or software documentation
- tuning your application/system environment for best performance and memory usage
Accessing the Configuration Settings
Windows NT 4.x Windows 95 Windows NT 3.5x
Configuration Parameters
Windows NT 3.5x
Double-click the FIRE GL 1000 icon in the Control Panel window to display the Configuration Settings menu with the following options:
Windows NT 4.x
Click Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display, or click with the right mouse button on the Windows desktop and select Properties.
Select the Monitor tab to set the
Select the Configuration tab to display a menu with the following options:
Select the DMA Buffers tab to display a menu with the following options:
Windows 95
Click Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display, or click with the right mouse button on the Windows desktop and select Properties.
Select the Fire GL 1000 Direct3D tab to display a menu with the following options:
Texture Compression
Available Texture Formats
Advanced Options
Select the Fire GL 1000 OpenGL tab to display a menu with the following options:
Pixel Format Options
General Options
Configuration Parameters
Notes: Modifications to the Boot-Time parameters are effective after rebooting the system.
The Apply button immediately enables modifications to the Dynamic parameters and Gamma Correction Adjustment without rebooting the system.
Boot-Time Configuration Params / OpenGL
- Export 'PFD_SUPPORT_GDI' modes (Windows NT and Windows 95)
These checkboxes control whether the 'PFD_SUPPORT_GDI' flags are exported for single-buffered and double-buffered pixel formats.
- Export High Resolution, Single Buffered Formats (Windows NT only)
Check this box to enable the driver to boot at resolutions where only single-buffered pixel formats are supported by GLINT acceleration (because at higher resolutions, there is not enough VRAM to support double-buffered formats). By default, this is disabled to prevent users from booting into a mode that will result in unaccelerated applications that use double buffered modes.
- SoftImage version 3.01/3.51 specific support (Windows NT only)
Check the appropriate box to ensure correct operation of your version of SoftImage. Support for version 3.51 excludes support for version 3.01.
- Use BIOS PCI base addresses (Windows NT only)
Check this box to use the originally configured PCI BIOS base addresses rather than those configured by Windows NT HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for addressing the graphics card. For some hardware configurations the HAL allocated PCI base addresses are not valid.
Dynamic Configuration Params / OpenGL
- Disable Delta (Windows NT only)
Check this box to prevent the Delta triangle setup chip from being used. This is useful for performance comparison.
- Draw Line Endpoints (Windows NT and Windows 95)
Setting this option may improve the legibility of text rendered by some applications using stroke fonts, for example, ProEngineer.
Dynamic Texture Configuration / OpenGL
- Force Nearest Neighbour Filtering / Texturing (Windows NT and Windows 95)
This setting ensures that only nearest neighbour texturing operations are performed. In some applications this improves the performance, although in some cases a lower quality texture filter is used. Textures are still rendered with perspective correction. Check this setting to find out if you can improve the performance/texturing quality ratio with your application.
- Enable Texture Compression (Windows NT and Windows 95)
This option will shrink 2D texture maps as they are loaded to reduce the memory needed to store them. The setting has no effect on 1D or paletted texture maps. This setting applies to all hardware configurations.
- Perspective Correction (Windows NT and Windows 95)
This setting varies the accuracy of the perspective-correction divide performed during textured rendering. Force Nicest enforces operation of the most accurate divide, resulting in best image quality. Force Fastest switches to a reduced accuracy divide resulting in best performance at lower image quality. The third option allows smart applications to vary the divide accuracy.
Gamma Correction Adjustment (Windows NT only)
The brightness produced at the face of the display is proportional to the input voltage raised to the power gamma. This nonlinearity must be compensated to achieve correct reproduction of the image's brightness. The effect of display gamma is to darken the midtones relative to the dark and light regions. The gamma correction adjustment affects the entire screen display. The possible setting range is 0.3 - 4.0. The default setting is 1.0.
Boot Time Buffer Size Options (Windows NT only)
Specify the size of a DMA buffer and the number of DMA buffers allocated at boot time. Consider that you need enough buffers for your applications to run smoothly but that each of these buffers uses up system memory.
Dynamic Buffer Options (Windows NT and Windows 95)
Each buffer is divided into sub-buffers which are used in conjunction with an Interrupt DMA mechanism to reduce latency in the system. Setting the number of sub-buffers to 2 will disable the interrupt mechanism.
Direct3D Parameters (Windows 95 only)
- Selective Patching
This scheme will patch textures if they are loaded onto the card using the Direct3D ALLOC_ON_LOAD scheme.
- Always Patch
This scheme will always patch textures, whether or not they are stored using the ALLOC_ON_LOAD scheme. Note that this may break applications that need to render to texture surfaces without compression.
- Never Patch
Never patches textures.
- 8Bit RGB Textures
Direct3D Retained mode chooses the texture format that best matches the original image file. This can cause applications to use 8Bit RGB textures when a higher resolution texture format would be better. For this reason 8Bit RGB textures are disabled by default. This check box enables 8Bit RGB textures.
- Disable Alpha Textures
Disables Alpha Texture operations in the Direct3D HAL driver. . (HAL: Hardware Abstraction Layer)
- True Color Textures
Enables the use of True Color textures in the Direct3D HAL driver. This option will use a lot of video memory if it is picked by a Direct3D application.
- Don't Force CopyMode
Allows the Direct3D driver to use texture modulation. When turned off it allows the original color of the texture map to be seen.
- Disable Direct3D HAL
Disables hardware 3D acceleration. (HAL: Hardware Abstraction Layer).
- No Vblank Wait
Prevents the DirectDraw HAL driver from waiting for Video Blanking signals before it flips pages. This allows full screen applications to run at full speed by preventing them from waiting for the Video Blanking interval. However, this may result in some 'tearing' of the images on the screen.
- Filter Stretching
Filters all stretched blit operations. This function is off by default because it slows down stretch blit performance. Useful for real time anti-aliasing demos that wish to stretch large images down with filtering.
3D-Win
3D-Win is an easy-to-use 3D viewer for rotation, manipulation, and rendering of AutoCAD 3D-objects in real-time. You can modify your AutoCAD design via various functions by clicking on 3D-Win icons. For example, you can change the camera position, make different shadings, for example, Gouraud, or walk through or around an object with the 'Walk' command.
- Simple, fast viewing angle changes
- Zoom views
- Fast import of DWG designs (if AutoDesk compatible)
- Layer manipulation
- Various rendering methods (e.g. Gouraud) per mouse click
- View manipulation via slider or mouse
- View export to AutoCAD
- WALK and TEACH animations
- Animation recording - AVI
- Integrated toolbar for fast function access
- Online help
Notes: You need AutoCAD r13 for Windows NT installed on your system to use 3DWin.
The current version of 3D-Win is designed only for Windows NT (3.51 and higher).
Installation
Note: You must have already installed Fire GL 1000 drivers before continuing.
- Double-click the icon Display Component Setup in the DIAMOND program group.
- Select Add component and 3D-Win.
- Click OK. The installation program will automatically copy all the necessary files onto your hard disk.
- When 3D-Win has finished installing, you can find the 3D-Win icon in the DIAMOND program group.
Using 3D-Win
- Run AutoCAD r13 and load the file you want to see or render.
- From the Program Manager double-click the 3D-Win icon in the DIAMOND program group.
- In the 3D-Win window select Get Model from the AutoCAD menu to load the file into 3DWin.
3D-Win is virtually self-explanatory. If you have problems with some of the dialog boxes, or don't understand certain system reactions, check the online help for information and details. You can access the online help with the respective Help button in a dialog or the Help button in the menubar.
AutoCAD for Windows - BigFocus Driver.
The BigFocus driver is supplied for use with AutoCAD 13 running under Windows 95 or Windows NT. The driver allows view and layer manipulation, spyglass lens, bird's-eye view and view export.
Using BigFocus is self-explanatory but if you should need further information, consult the integrated online help and/or the separate BigFocus documentation. .
BigFocus Installation
Note: You must have already installed Fire GL 1000 drivers before continuing.
If you have the 'Display Component Setup' icon in the
DIAMOND program group ...
- Double-click the icon Display Component Setup in the DIAMOND program group.
- Select Add component and BigFocus.
- Click OK. The installation program will automatically copy all the necessary files onto your hard disk.
If you do not have the 'Display Component Setup' icon ...
Put the CD into your CD drive and start the installation as follows:
- Windows NT 3.5x: Start the Program Manager, select File - Run, then START.EXE from the root directory of the CD.
Windows 95 / Windows NT 4.0: Click the START button in the task bar, select the option 'Run' and then select START.EXE from the root directory of the CD.
- Choose English as your language for the installation.
- The main menu is displayed.
- Click the Start Installation button.
- Confirm your hardware if necessary.
- Select Custom installation, and enter or confirm the path for the software installation.
- Click the Next button
- Select BigFocus from the list and follow the instructions on the screen. The installation program will automatically copy all the necessary files onto your hard disk.
Reconfiguring AutoCAD for Windows to use BigFocus:
- Start ACADWIN, Select "Options", "Configure", and when selecting the display driver choose:
BigFocus - Accelerated Display Driver.
- Save your changes.
Software Application Notes
- Some applications (3D Studio Max, 3D-Win, OpenGL-Demos..) support full hardware acceleration only in TrueColor and High Color video modes. To prevent color problems, switch off the hardware acceleration when working in 256-color mode.
- HEIDI installation: 3D Studio MAX must be properly installed on your system and must have been started at least once before HEIDI can be installed using the installation procedure.
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