| 7 | | Panorama is a VESA BIOS enabler driver. Panorama uses the system's VESA BIOS to provide access to and control the video hardware. |
| | 7 | The Panorama driver is technically not really a driver at all. It is simply a program (a DLL actually) that interfaces between the OS/2 video subsystem and your computer's video BIOS. The video BIOS in your computer really does all the work. The Panorama DLL simply translates between the OS/2 "language" and the BIOS "language". So Panorama doesn't really control the hardware like other "real" drivers do. It relies totally on the system's BIOS to setup and control the hardware. |
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| | 9 | This approach has both its benefits and its drawbacks. The benefit is that Panorama will work on every system that has a standard VESA BIOS version 2.0 or higher -- which is almost every system in existence. The drawback is that it is restricted by the capabilities and limitations of that VESA BIOS. |
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| | 11 | One common limitation is video acceleration. Most VESA BIOS only support basic operations and do not support the advanced features of the video chipset such as acceleration. |
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| | 13 | Another common limitation is that a standard VESA BIOS only supports a few standard resolutions and color depths. As a work around for this BIOS limitation, the custom resolution module in Panorama patches the BIOS in order to force it to operate at higher resolutions or wider screen formats than it was designed to do. Needless to say, patching software (the BIOS) to do something it was not designed to do does not always work. In the case of custom resolutions, patching the BIOS works often enough to make doing it worthwhile. |
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