INTRODUCTION

February 1996

This is the readme file for the new Genius Monitor Windows Display Driver v3.11.100.

Two new Genius1.drv drivers have been written. 

One is the 386 version and is shareware, meaning that you are free to distribute copies for 
evaluation. Once an evaluation period of 30 days is over the product must either be deleted from 
your system or registered with the author and a license fee of $38.60 is due. This driver uses 
extensive 32-bit code to improve performance and will not run on a 286 or earlier processor.

The other driver is a 486 version and uses some instructions not found on the 386 to achieve even 
higher performance. This version will not run on a 386. It will run on 80486s, Pentiums, Cyrix 
386/486 upgrades and all processors that claim to support the 486 instruction set. It is not 
shareware and is only licensed for one computer.

Registered users receive licenses for the 486 and 386 versions of Genius Monitor driver. 

Copies can be registered by mail to Dr. Martin Atkinson-Barr, 26038 Edenpark Drive, Calabasas, 
CA 91302-1013, USA. E-mail inquiries, bug reports and other correspondence should be directed 
to MCMAB@aol.com. Urgent requests for copies of the 486 driver can be filled by file transfer in 
most cases.

These drivers has been extensively tested but the author cannot warranty them free of defects. 
Every effort has been made to identify and eliminate bugs but customers should understand that 
due to the wide range of PC setups and erroneous settings in Windows there will be times when the 
driver will appear to fail.

Installation: Exit Windows to DOS. In the system directory, usually c:\windows\system rename the 
old genius1.drv to genius1.old then copy the new genius1.drv to the system directory. Restart 
Windows. Go to file manager, highlight the new file and choose File, Properties from the menu to 
view the version information.

Here are the Winbench 4.0 results for the shareware 386 version. (Most of the disclosure is 
required by Ziff-Davis as part of their license). The GWM benchmark numbers should give an idea 
of the performance benefits of this driver.

NAME                                    Shareware 386 version

REQUIRED DISCLOSURE

Benchmark                               Ziff-Davis' WinBench Version 4.0
Operating System                        MS-DOS 5.0
Windows System                          Windows 3.10 Enhanced Mode
Computer                                Atronics 386 Motherboard w/Cyrix 486Dr2
Processor                               80486+80387
Processor Speed                         66 MHz
Off-Chip Processor Cache                64 KB
Processor RAM                           8 MB
Video Driver                            genius1.drv 3.00 Mon Feb 05 13:14:04 1996 Size: 46768
Video Adapter                           Genius 736x1008 Display
Video DRAM                              0 KB
Video VRAM                              0 KB
Video Refresh Rate                      60 Hz
Video Mode                              736 X 1008 1 bits/pixel
Hard Disk                               Seagate Barracuda 4 Gig
Hard Disk Controller                    Always IN-2000 SCSI
HD Controller RAM                       0 KB
Software Disk Cache                     SmartDrive 5.0: A B C D- E- F- G
Software Cache Size                     512 KB

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Description                             Shareware 386 version
Time                                    Mon Feb 05 14:20:45 1996
Registered Name                         Martin Atkinson
Registered Organization                 Personal
Tester Name                             Martin Atkinson
Tester Organization                     Personal
Machine Name                            None
Comments                                32 FastFile Access, no 32-bit Disk Access
System Metrics                          Screen: 736X1008, Full Screen: 736X988 Frame: 6X6, Border: 
1X1 DlgFrame: 4X4 Scroll V: 15X15 H: 15X15, Thumb V: 15 H: 15 Caption: 20 Menu: 18 Size: 
18X18 Icon: 32X32, Cursor: 32X32 MinTrack: 106X30, Min: 106X30 Mouse: 1 Swap: 0 Debug: 
0 Kanji: 0
Video Capabilities                      Size: 736X1008 pixels, 195X267 mm., 96X96 pixels/inch 
Aspect: 12X12 17 Planes: 1 Bits/Plane: 1 Palette Size: 0, Reserved: 0, Color Resolution 0 Brushes: 
77, Pens:8, Fonts: 0, Colors 2 Capabilities: Clip 0x0, Raster 0x299, Curve 0x0, Line 0x22, Poly 
0x8, Text 0x2004
Disk Settings                           32BitDiskAccess=off FileSysChange=off VirtualHDIrq=off

NOTES

1    The following Windows tasks were running during this test: PROGMAN.EXE

WEIGHTED SUITE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                SCORE  UNITS               NOTES

Disk WinMark                                            Not Run  Thousand Bytes/Sec
Graphics WinMark                                           2.49  Million Pixels/Sec

TEST                                                      SCORE  UNITS               NOTES


Combined GWM1                                              3.48  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM2                                              1.84  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM3                                              2.93  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM4                                              2.21  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM5                                              2.71  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM6                                              2.66  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM7                                               2.3  Million Pixels/Sec  1

END
NAME                                    Original MDS Driver

REQUIRED DISCLOSURE

Benchmark                               Ziff-Davis' WinBench Version 4.0
Operating System                        MS-DOS 5.0
Windows System                          Windows 3.10 Enhanced Mode
Computer                                Atronics 386 motherboard w/Cyrix 486Dr2
Processor                               80486+80387
Processor Speed                         66 MHz
Off-Chip Processor Cache                64 KB
Processor RAM                           8 MB
Video Driver                            genius1.drv 3.00 Wed Nov 21 11:10:24 1990 Size: 47104
Video Adapter                           Genius 736x1008 Display
Video DRAM                              0 KB
Video VRAM                              0 KB
Video Refresh Rate                      60 Hz
Video Mode                              736 X 1008 1 bits/pixel
Hard Disk                               Seagate Barracuda 4 Gig
Hard Disk Controller                    Always IN-2000
HD Controller RAM                       0 KB
Software Disk Cache                     SmartDrive 5.0: A B C D- E- F- G
Software Cache Size                     128 KB

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Description                             Original MDS Driver
Time                                    Mon Feb 05 14:43:15 1996
Registered Name                         Martin Atkinson
Registered Organization                 Personal
Tester Name                             Martin Atkinson
Tester Organization                     Personal
Machine Name                            None
Comments                                512K 32-bit FastFile, No FastDisk
System Metrics                          Screen: 736X1008, Full Screen: 736X988 Frame: 6X6, Border: 
1X1 DlgFrame: 4X4 Scroll V: 15X15 H: 15X15, Thumb V: 15 H: 15 Caption: 20 Menu: 18 Size: 
18X18 Icon: 32X32, Cursor: 32X32 MinTrack: 106X30, Min: 106X30 Mouse: 1 Swap: 0 Debug: 
0 Kanji: 0
Video Capabilities                      Size: 736X1008 pixels, 195X267 mm., 96X96 pixels/inch 
Aspect: 12X12 17 Planes: 1 Bits/Plane: 1 Palette Size: 0, Reserved: 0, Color Resolution 0 Brushes: 
77, Pens:8, Fonts: 0, Colors 2 Capabilities: Clip 0x0, Raster 0x299, Curve 0x0, Line 0x22, Poly 
0x8, Text 0x2004
Disk Settings                           32BitDiskAccess=off FileSysChange=off VirtualHDIrq=off

NOTES

1    The following Windows tasks were running during this test: PROGMAN.EXE

WEIGHTED SUITE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                SCORE  UNITS               NOTES

Disk WinMark                                            Not Run  Thousand Bytes/Sec
Graphics WinMark                                            1.9  Million Pixels/Sec

TEST                                                      SCORE  UNITS               NOTES

Combined GWM1                                              3.21  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM2                                              1.74  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM3                                              2.53  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM4                                               1.7  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM5                                              2.35  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM6                                              1.78  Million Pixels/Sec  1
Combined GWM7                                              1.93  Million Pixels/Sec  1


NOTES ADDED BY SOFTWARE AUTHOR:

Winbench tells some of the story but it's apples and oranges we are comparing. In the new version 
four different things are happening:

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly interrupts are never turned off therefore the screen results 
represent the video as just one of the tasks on the system rather than the priority task which the 
original driver made it. Networks, fax/modem boards, multimedia applications and background 
processes will all be faster and more reliable as a result. There cannot be dropped interrupts! 
Winbench does not take into account the latency of the machine. When Winbench is running it has 
the whole machine and ignores anyone else!

Secondly the cursor is more responsive to the user and updates immediately. The more attention 
paid to the cursor is usually at the expense of the screen re-draw speed. In the extreme case of no 
cursor we can just blast away! In Winbench the cursor must not move, else the test is invalidated. 
In real life we want a responsive cursor that has so little overhead the screen updates continually. 
This did not happen with the old genius driver. Try moving a cursor over an animated frame to see 
the effect on the drawing speeds of the two drivers.

Thirdly the test machine we have hit the bus limit with the bitblits, the GWM#1 figure is just 
writing pixels to the screen while GWM#2-#7 involve mainly read a pixel, alter it and write it back 
leading to twice the bus traffic. You can see that GWM#1 is about 2x the rate of the others. Of 
course the faster we make our processor the more we hit the limit on bus transfers - eventually all 
of the routines will top out at about 3.5 million pixels/sec for a read and 1.75 million pixels/sec for 
a read-write on an 8MHz ISA bus with 4-wait states. To increase your display speed see if your 
motherboard supports switchable bus speed. The genius certainly works at 11Mhz (my disk 
controller however falls over!).

Lastly Winbench measures only the foreground process (itself) and there should not be any 
background processes running. That's fine and probably the best we can get as a sort of single 
figure "Winmark" however many users have multiple processes open and most users run a 
background process it it's only Print Manager. In reality some applications have a sort of 
schizophrenia - one example is Word for Windows where background pagination is an option. The 
old genius driver turned interrupts off and on when it went into the background. On Windows 3.0 
this resulted in almost no background work being done. That was caused by the reasonable action 
of trapping interrupts in 3.0. In versions 3.1 Microsoft gave up and let the driver actually turn off 
the interrupts rather than trapping the instruction. Result: background processes ran OK but the 
machine went into a coma for short periods of time leading to network failures, disk crashes, 
aborted faxes/ modem transfers. One of the big things about Win95 is that Microsoft says it does 
not turn off interrupts. This driver has not been tested with Win95.

Hope you enjoy your new genius driver. The shareware is to allow you to try it for a period of 30 
days. After that please register and pay your $38.60 or destroy all your copies. There is also a 486 
version for Pentiums (Pentia?) and 486s which is not shareware but a license for the 386 will also 
bring the 486 version and vice versa. The license is granted on a per machine basis. If you try this 
on Windows95 please contact the author at MCMAB@aol.com or write to 26038 Edenpark Drive, 
Calabasas, CA 91302 - also the place where payment is gratefully accepted.
