*** Fernando Ariel Gont wrote in a message to Scott McNay:
 SM> The problem is, each video card is different.  I'd suggest that
 SM> your first stop be the VESA standard (www.vesa.com, I think), and
 SM> your second stop be UniVBE (www.scitech.com, I think; do a web
 SM> search for UniVBE or UniVESA).  You can probably find UNIVBE or
FAG> What's the difference betwen UniVBE and VESA?
VBE is the new name for VESA.  VBE stands for Video BIOS Extensions, and VESA 
stands for Video Electronics Standards Association.  A VESA-compliant card is 
hardware-compatible, while VBE indicates software compliance.  The software 
used to be referred to as a VESA driver; it's now referred to as VBE. UniVESA 
and UniVBE are a "generic" implementation of VBE that can detect and 
configure itself for nearly any video card.  Among other things, it can 
optionally replace the card's built-in VBE implementation, to either upgrade 
it to the most current level and/or to avoid bugs in the BIOS code. 
Currently, a fairly decent set diagnostics routines is included, although 
there are some problems that it does not detect, last I checked.  One of the 
nice features is that it can identify exactly what chipsets and clock speeds 
the video system uses and how much memory is available; the detection seems 
to be more comprehensive and accurate than that of any other program.
FAG> The fact is that I have already got a VESA 2.0 reference
FAG> pdf, but it's only a reference... I need a paper that
FAG> teaches how to use VESA function features, and what to use
FAG> them for.....
The older 1.x functions are nearly all informational; you use one function to 
find out information about the specific video card, another function to find 
out what features are offered by specific modes (resulution, memory mapping 
method, etc.), and another function to actually set the mode (several modes 
are predefined by the VESA standard).  2.x, as I recall, actually has 
functions for doing certain things, such as defining and moving a sprite 
(such as a cursor), etc.  It's been several years since I looked at the VESA 
standard, so I know litle about 2.x.
On your MSCDEX problem, I use MS-DOS 6.22, so can't really help.
--Scott.
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