Booyah DETH!

I finally got DETH to work! I am running XP, and apparently I was havin' the same problem everone else was with DETH! But I may have figured out how to fix it! First, create a shortcut to your desktop. Then right-click it and go to properties. Put all the memory options to "Auto" (note: this may not matter). Under compatibility, put it to Windows 95 compatibility. Check "Run in 256 colors" and "Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution". Under Screen, fill in the radio button for "Full-screen". Hit OK. Go to the DETH .INI, and put the video mode to "1" (640x480x256). I enabled the graphical front-end; it probably doesn't matter. There! It should work now! This'll probably work for ZETH, too. Yay! I can't believe after all this I'm still basically using DEU . . . :P

I don't use DETH, but any thread that helps run an old program in XP is OK by me.

The problem is that your video card doesn't support VESA. The resolution/color you picked is standard VGA. 640x480 is ok if all you have is a 15" or less monitor.

It used to be possible to get non-VESA cards to work by using SCI-TECH's program - haven't checked it out for a long time and how/if it works in XP.

insertwackynamehere# said:

I don't use DETH, but any thread that helps run an old program in XP is OK by me.

Thanks for approving the existance of this thread!

deep said:

The problem is that your video card doesn't support VESA. The resolution/color you picked is standard VGA. 640x480 is ok if all you have is a 15" or less monitor.

uh, no, that's not the problem. deth/zeth don't run properly on my computer on xp either, and i have a radeon 7500 and a 17' monitor.

boris said:

Thanks for approving the existance of this thread!

I'm not trying to act like I'm powerful, and everything must be approved by me, I just want there to more threads that help XP users with old programs.

sargebaldy said:

uh, no, that's not the problem. deth/zeth don't run properly on my computer on xp either, and i have a radeon 7500 and a 17' monitor.

But do you have VESA drivers for it? That's the point of the SCI TECH program deep mentioned. Ahhh VESA, I have memories of my shitty drivers that came with my old SVGA card, and then discovering that program and finding out that there really was nothing wrong with my card.... :P

wohoo, nice.

I run win98 and use DETH in 800x600, but I guess 640x480 is completely functional too. DETH is not an editor one chooses for fancy looks either way :P

Here's the scoop on VESA lifted from the 2nd link below:

"Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). They defined a new standard programmer's interface so that programmers would only have to write one set of graphics routines for SuperVGA. This was the VESA standard"

Briefly a standard evolved in the DOS days to make it easy to do hires graphics using 1 set of API calls without custom stuff for every card. Why Windows ended up being so successful.

Many new cards have dropped VESA support since it's not required any longer in a Windows environment. Instead they just write windows drivers to achieve the same result.

For example, I can run DETH and ZETH on XP at various resolutions because my card (a GF2) does have VESA support built-in. IOW, not an XP problem.

some links:

organization: http://www.vesa.org/mission.htm

programming: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/supervga-programming/

drivers: http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/enterprise/free_titles.html

Hmm, well, if it's not a problem with XP, why do DETH/ZETH work fine in 98 but only on 640x480 in XP, with my GeForce4?

For sure it's not an XP issue per se, since many can run in XP. That leaves only the card bios and drivers. To answer the question objectively, boot to a pure DOS environment and see if it still works.

If it does, then the card has VESA support and somehow in XP it's glitching.

If not, then Nvidia did a workaround for 98? There are also Video BIOS reporting tools that will tell you. SciTech has one of those.

This problem is appearing with the newer video cards, including ATI. People would have it working in XP, switch to a newer card and it stops working.

hey deep, check there : http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15321

the other problem is that even though it will load in 640x480 but my mouse doesn't show up so it's worthless to me.