Re: Windows 95 Video Modes for 701?

["John H. Kim" <jokim@mit.edu>]

On Wed, 17 Jul 1996, epbrown wrote:

> 	My current setting are: 640x480, True Color (24-bit), wih the
> display set to Chips & Tech. Accelerator, Laptop Display Panel, Energy
> Star Compliant.  Everything's fine except for a dithered look to .gifs
> and .jpgs with large areas of a single color, like a sky or green
> field.  Not horrible, but the old drivers *seemed* better...

The dithering is caused by the TFT.  While the display chipset is
capable of 24-bit color, the TFT is only capable of about 15-bit
color.  I've tested mine side by side with a monitor and it's
pretty obvious.  I didn't notice any difference between the Win3.1
video drivers and the Win95 drivers.

Unless you're using an external monitor or a program that runs faster
with 24-bit color (i.e. insists on dithering in 15/16-bit or 8-bit
mode), I'd recommend you just run the machine in 15-bit mode (32k
colors).  It's 2/3rds the number of bits for the hardware to push
around as 24-bit mode, meaning the video will be faster and look the
same.

> 	And while I'm here, what about the hard drive settings.  Mine never
> stopped spinning until I set the system as a desktop rather than
> mobile.  Any tips?

There are two different power saving settings, one for battery and
one for AC.  The BIOS is smart enough to switch which is displayed
depending on whether you're currently running off battery or AC.
It's easy to miss this unless you read everything carefully.  Chances
are you set the hard drive spindown time in one mode, and tested it
in the other.

Also, Win95 likes to hit the hard disk at odd times to play with its
swapfile.  If you have a lot of memory, just turn it off.  Otherwise
change it to a fixed size.  The "let Windows manage my swapfile size"
option isn't very smart, and caused many many crashes on my computer
due to the swap partition filling up.

One thing I'm not happy about is that you can't disable the hard drive
spindown in standby mode (Fn-F2 or shut the cover).  I leave my
machine running Linux almost all the time.  If I accidently shut the
cover and login remotely, every time I do something that accesses the
disk, I have to wait a few seconds for the hard drive to spin up.
After the disk access, it immediately spins down because the cover
is shut.  Arrrrrgh....
--
John H. Kim       "I stop for red traffic lights" -- bumper sticker 
jokim@mit.edu     commissioned by the City of Boston as part of a
MIT Sea Grant     campaign to shed its reputation for bad drivers.