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VTBook Tech Support FAQ

See also the General FAQ and the Tested Hardware page

 

 

Windows/PC questions:

Mac questions:

 

 

Windows/PC questions:

Windows known issues
  1. In the standard driver, while using a Virtual DualDisplay resolution, video playback disables DVI screen. This issue is under investigation. To enable again the DVI screen restart or stop the video playback, put the system in standby and awake.
  2. 3D Game Unreal Tournament 2003 freeze.
    This issue will be followed up at lower priority compared to other functional issues. May be addressed in driver release 2.2. Not high priority since VTBook is not expected to be a game accelerator card. No problems have been reported with other 3D applications and benchmarks so far.
  3. Compatibility problems on SONY VAIO FX700 and FX800 notebook families.
    The problem is currently being addressed together with SONY.
  4. Save, Reload, Reset buttons are not enabled in the Video control panel.
    The problem will be addressed in a future driver release (2.2).
  5. 3D applications are expected to run slower on VTBook than internal graphics. This is because of power constraints of CardBus. VTBook is not expected to be a game/3D accelerator.
  6. A few notebooks may not be able to provide enough power on the PC Card socket to correctly use VTBook. So far only the following systems are know to have this problem: Dell Inspiron 6500, Mitac AMD 1.6GHz. Get in touch with our support staff in case you have problem with your system, we may be able to provide some workarounds. New drivers 2.0 are also supposed to address this issue, reducing the power consumption of VTBook.
  7. Notebooks using the O2Micro PC Card bridges deliver lower bandwidth. This will mainly affect rotated modes, mirrored modes, speed benchmarks, 3D applications. Several latest Acer notebooks are using this bridge chip.

 

Windows known issues with workarounds
  1. Rotation control panel has no effect.
    Rotation modes are still accessible as standard video modes using the resolution slider after having enabled all video modes, as described in the documentation. This problem will be addressed at lower priority, probably in driver release 2.1.
  2. Waking up from Hibernation under Win2k causes the default vertical refresh mode to be set on the display.
    The problem will be addressed in driver release 2.1.
  3. Standard VTBook drivers do not offer mirror functionality at this time. If mirror modes is needed for VTBook, it can be enabled by a third party application.
  4. Rotated modes are slower than standard video modes. Overall speeds can be improved removing background desktop picture and switching to 16 bit color modes if color accuracy is not strictly needed

Windows long term issues and enhancements
  1. It is not possible to display scaled down resolutions on Apple ADC displays at this time.

 

My Dell notebook restarts when I try to boot it with VTBook inserted
  • This problem affects the following Dell notebook models:
    • Inspiron 5150, 8500, 8600, 9100, XPS
    • Latitude D400, D600, D800
    • Precision M60
  • These notebook models, if equipped with a BIOS released before 15th July 2004, are not fully CardBus compliant and VTBook can not reliably work with them.
  • If you are planning to use VTBook on one of these notebook models or if you experience problems using VTBook on them, please download the latest BIOS update for your notebook.
  • Here is a list of the BIOS versions, released 15th July 2004, that fix this problem:
    • Inspiron 5150 : BIOS version A35
    • Inspiron 8500 : BIOS version A06
    • Inspiron 8600 : BIOS version A09
    • Latitude D600 : BIOS version A13
    • Latitude D800 : BIOS version A10
    • Precision M60 : BIOS version A06
  • To download a Dell BIOS update please follow these steps:
    • Go to http://support.dell.com
    • Click the "Downloads" link
    • Insert the notebook product and model and press the arrow
    • Select Flash Bios update in the download category
    • Select Windows XP in the OS section
    • Press Submit
    • Follow the instructions provided by Dell

 

I experience slow 2D and video performance. What is the reason?
  • Most likely your notebook has a limited PCCard CardBus bridge: some PCCard bridges have a known limitation in the amount of bandwidth available for PCCard cards. For PCCards needing a great amount of bandwidth, like VTBook, this limitation is noticeable.
    If your notebook has a limited PCCard Bridge, VTBook will be usable but the most bandwidth-intensive applications may not show an acceptable performance.
    Examples of these applications are: video playback, pivot resolutions, mirroring, games.
    List of tested PCCard Bridges:

    • Texas Instruments: very good bridge, no noticeable limitation.

    • Toshiba TOPIC, used by some Toshiba systems: limited but DVD playback is OK.

    • Ricoh, used by several IBM systems: limited but DVD playback is OK.

    • O2Micro: used by several Acer systems: very limited, DVD playback is choppy.


    To know which bridge is used in your system, right click on "My Computer" on the desktop and select Properties. Then select the Hardware panel and click on "Device Manager".
    In Device Manager the "PCMCIA adapters" item contains the PCCArd bridges used on your system.

  • If you installed a Margie Display-to-Go card on your system be aware that Display-to-Go drivers disable VTBook's 2D acceleration.

 

My DVI projector or Apple 15" ADC display does not show anything!
  • This is a known issue of VTBook Windows drivers version 1.5, affecting DVI 640x480 60Hz, DVI 800x600 60Hz and DVI 1280x1024 60Hz modes. Please update the VTBook drivers to version 1.6 or higher.

 

Rotation control panel does not work
  • This is a known issue of current drivers Don't use the rotation control panel but simply use the resolution slider after having disabled the "show only supported resolutions" checkbox. Refer to the installed inline documentation for more details.

 

WinDVD playback is slow!
  • This is a known issue of WinDVD not using VTBook's hardware acceleration at resolutions greater than 1280x1024.
  • If you use such resolutions, to make WinDVD use VTBook's hardware acceleration you must set the display connected to VTBook as the primary display.
  • Alternatively, you can change the internal screen resolution (if possible) to match the VTBook resolution.

 

 

How do I create a VTBook Gauge Report?
  • Right click on the Village Tronic icon in the system tray (in the right part of the toolbar on the primary display) and choose Open.
  • If there is no icon run Start menu --> Village Tronic VTBook --> VTBookGauge
  • Push View report button
  • Click on Copy
  • You can now paste the report in an email or in a text file

 

How do I create a system (.nfo file) report?
  • Type "msinfo32.exe" in start menu -> run...
  • Choose File --> save
  • Zip and send the generated .nfo file: it contains info about installed hardware and drivers

 

 

Mac questions:

I can't install the latest driver: the installer says I don't have the right OS version
  • When a VTBook driver is released, it is built to be compatible with the latest OS version available. This way, it may not work correctly with earlier OS versions.
  • To install new VTBook drivers you should always update your OS to the latest available version, as recommended by Apple.
  • More information:
    Apple updates the graphics drivers in nearly all system updates (the only exception up t now has been the little 10.3.1 upddate). In some updates only the built in graphics drivers are updated, in other updates also the graphics architecture is changed. In these cases, new VTBook drivers may not be compatible with earlier systems, as happens to the drivers Apple ships with the OS.
    VTBook has different Mac OS X drivers depending on the operating system. The installer automatically chooses the right driver for your OS but requires a minimum OS version for installation to occur. For old OS versions this is usually the latest update, for example 10.2.8 for Jaguar.

 

I'm using Photoshop and when I move a palette I see a dirt trace behind it or its outline disappears
  • This is a known issue in the way Photoshop redraws palettes on Mac OS. This issue happens with every non AGP graphics card. We already contacted both Adobe and Apple to bring their attention to this issue.

 

Why is my screensaver slow on all my screens?
  • Mac OS X screensavers provided by Apple are quite heavy fullscreen OpenGL applications. If the screen connected to VTBook has a fairly high resolution, the screensaver appearing on it may appear choppy.
  • On recent PowerBooks the internal graphics card is much faster than VTBook and can ussually show fluid screensavers even on high resolution displays. Unfortunately, the standard Mac OS X screensavers are synchronized over all screens and as a result will have the speed of the slowest graphics card. We already filed a feature request to Apple requesting that the screensaver, as well as other screen effects, can be run asynchronously on each screen.

 

How do I create a System Profiler profile?
  • Mac OS X:
    • Open the Apple menu
    • Choose the option "About this Mac"
    • Click "More Info..."
    • In the File menu, click "Save As"
    • Choose to save it in a convenient folder, like the desktop
  • Mac OS 9:
    • Open Apple System Profiler from the Apple menu
    • Select "New Report" from the File menu
    • Indicate that you want to gather information on all the possible elements
    • Select Save from the File menu
    • Choose to save it in a convenient folder, like the desktop.

 

Mac OS known issues
  1. OS9: Using panning modes, the 2D driver may redraw the screen not correctly.
    The problem will be fixed in a later release.
  2. OS9: When panning video mode is enabled at first boot, the first screen fill is wrong.
    The problem will be fixed in a later release.
  3. OS9: Intense 2D activities may cause some specific DVI displays to resync.
    The problem has a known solution and will be implemented asap.
  4. OSX: I'm using the OpenGL drivers and my external USB peripheral is not recognized.
    When lots of textures are transferred to the VTBook (as happens for example with the slideshow screensavers), external USB hubs and peripherals may be disconnected. If this happens, physically disconnect the USB peripheral and reconnect it. This is a behavior with complex reasons that has already improved and will continue to improve.
  5. OSX: Hot Plug and unplug can crash the OS
    Village Tronic is working actively with Apple to remove this Mac OS X limitation

 

Mac OS long term issues and enhancements
  1. Video playback is slow.
    VTBook does not feature video acceleration on Mac OS 9. On Mac OS X video acceleration is available only at Thousands of colors color depth. Village Tronic is still working in order to provide video acceleration even at Millions of colors color depth but at least for the moment this feature is not available.
  2. 3D applications are expected to run slower on VTBook than internal graphics. This is because of power constraints of CardBus. VTBook is not expected to be a game/3D accelerator. Still old systems like Wallstreets that lack native 3D acceleration can benefit from VTBook to run applications that require OpenGL like Keynote.
  3. OS9: On first generation PowerBook G4s using VTBook causes the system to freeze. This is an OS bug that is unlikely to be fixed by Apple: the best solution is to upgrade to Mac OS X.
  4. OS9: Some PowerBooks can't be put to sleep when VTBook is connected.
    Mac OS 9, on PowerBooks with Power Manager version 2.0 (including Titaniums), can't properly wake up a PC-Card graphics card. For this reason VTBook prevents the system from going to sleep.
  5. OS9: 3D OpenGL drivers are not present.
    There is no plan of developing Mac OS 9 3D OpenGL drivers.
  6. OSX: VTBook can't support Quartz Extreme.
    Quartz Extreme requires an AGP connection to the GPU, being VTBook a PC-Card graphics card it can't inherently support it. However, VTBook's drivers use the 3D engine every time 3D can be faster than 2D, in a Quartz Extreme-like behavior.
  

About tech support

Information technology is complicated. Complicated and extremely varied. This is why it is almost impossible to exactly replicate one particular configuration. What if one particular configuration is causing a particular problem?

Tech support inside Village Tronic works as follows:

  1. We receive a tech support request
  2. If the problem is not a new one, we give an immediate reply with an explanation and the solution (if it exists!)
  3. If the problem is new first we have to try to replicate it.
  4. When we can see the problem in our lab we try to understand its origin.
  5. If we can solve the problem, we try the solution with the customer and then incorporate the fix in the official software
  6. If the problem is not depending on us, we try to help the customer in getting tech support from the company making the component that's originating the problem.
  7. If we cannot immediately solve the problem and it is indeed a problem we have in our product, we try to find a workaround and place a new FAQ for the product citing the problem.

As you can see, once a problem is new, the most important step is number 3: try to reproduce it.

If we can't see a problem in our lab, we can't do much to solve it: how can we know what's going on? And how can we know if we are proceeding towards the solution or working in a wrong direction?
Information technology is complicated and in the range of possible hardware and software configurations we need to look in the right direction.

So, if you are a customer who's having a problem using a product made by Village Tronic, please spend five more minutes in describing better your problem. This way you'll be able to receive a better, faster tech support.

 

Useful Links:

 

VTBook product page. Every information about VTBook can be found starting from here.
Check regularly if new software or new accessories are available for your VTBook.
All latest VTBook software and documentation. Make sure you are using the latest drivers!
Every technical detail about VTBook is explained here.
A list of high end and nonstandard hardware we tested with VTBook.
The generic FAQ page. Useful also to find new ways of using VTBook
Learn how to write a good tech support mail. Support will be faster and more precise.

 

 

Support contacts:

 

For technical support requests and to report bugs, please visit our tech support site.

 

 

 
 
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