WHAT IS THE 8•24 GC SOFTWARE? The 8•24 GC software is a control panel device that enables graphics acceleration with the Macintosh® Display Card 8•24 GC. WHAT DO I NEED TO USE THE 8•24 GC VERSION 7.01 SOFTWARE? You must have the following installed in your Macintosh: * System 7.0 or greater (do NOT use System 6.0.x) * an 8•24 GC card * a minimum of 3 megabytes of RAM HOW TO INSTALL THE 8•24 GC SOFTWARE 1. Insert the 8•24 GC disk into your computer's floppy disk drive. 2. Drag the 8•24 GC icon to the system folder on your startup disk. System 7 will install this in the Control Panels folder for you. 3. You will need to restart your Macintosh for the software to be fully installed. PLEASE NOTE: The 8•24 GC software is not designed for use with 68040 (Quadra) Macintosh computers. Although the software can be copied into Control Panels, acceleration is permanently disabled. AFTER YOU INSTALL Restart your computer. A rocket will appear and travel up your screen. This indicates that the software has been installed correctly and acceleration is enabled. If the rocket does not travel up your screen and instead appears with a red circled line through it, there has been a problem installing the software. Please check your 8•24 GC manual for troubleshooting information. KNOWN 3RD PARTY PRODUCT PROBLEMS WITH THE 8•24 GC The following is a list of known problems running 3rd party applications with 8•24GC acceleration. Developers are being notified of these problems. In some cases, the developer has already addressed the problem and a resolution is listed, preceded by an "°." Until new versions are available from the 3rd party companies below, a temporary workaround for any of these bugs is to disable acceleration on the 8•24 GC card. To do this, choose Control Panels from the Apple menu. Find and select the 8•24 GC icon. In the box that appears at the top of the 8•24 GC Control Panel, click the icon with a circled line through it to turn acceleration off. When you turn acceleration on or off in the Control Panel, the change takes effect immediately; that is, you don't have to choose Restart. MacRenderman® 1.1 When you try to render a ".rib" file from RenderApp® you will get a bus error some time during the rendering process. We recommend that you disable acceleration before attempting this process, since it may take some time for the bug to surface, and your rendering process will need to be restarted. This problem is caused by MacRenderman's access of various reserved fields in QuickDraw data structures. The developer has been notified of the issue. Aldus PageMaker® 4.01 When using an Adobe Type Manager® font with PageMaker 4.01, no text appears on the screen when you type. ° This problem has been fixed in Aldus PageMaker 4.2 Macromind Director® 3.1 While running an animation sequence, you will notice some screen corruption around moving objects. Please note that other programs or games created with Macromind Director will display similar screen corruption. The developer has been notified of this problem. ImageStudio® 1.7 After launching ImageStudio, you will notice that the palette below the untitled document window, which is supposed to be grayscale, is solid black. We have notified the developer of this issue. DesignStudio® 2.0 While scrolling up and down through pages of text, you will notice that some of the text will appear smeared on the screen. The problem does not result in data corruption or system locks. The developer has been notified of this problem. Aldus SuperPaint 3.0 When running Aldus SuperPaint 3.0 random bus errors can occur. The developer has been notified of this issue. Image® 1.26f The LUT display on the left side of the screen is white instead of grayscale or color. Text drawn on the screen will appear fuzzy. Images will appear with extra dots. We have notified the developer of this problem. FullWrite Professional® 1.6(p1) Text that is highlighted disappears when you release the mouse. The developer has been notified of this problem. ClickChange® With ClickChange® enabled, the system will hang when you switch between colors and grays in the monitor control panel. Sometimes it takes a couple of times before your system will actually hang. The developer has been notified of the issue. Radius Rocket® The Radius Rocket is not compatible with the display card 8•24 GC. Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0® With the screen set to 4-bits per pixel or higher (16 colors), you will get a bus error upon launching Flight Simulator 4.0.® This is an incompatibility related to Flight Simulator's access of reserved registers in the 680X0 that are used by system software. The developer has been notified of the issue. Maxima RAM disk® Maxima® causes portions of the menu titles and/or areas behind some menus to be filled with corrupted data (random data). This problem will occur more frequently if the cards are placed in the high numbered NuBus slots (e.g. $e or slot 6 on the IIfx). Technically, this RAM disk is moving information from RAM into ROM address space which is reserved for Apple software. We have notified the developer of this issue. AfterDark® 2.0v (fish module only) When the "fish" module is active, you will notice a decrease in performance - the fish swim slower with the 8•24 GC acceleration ON. Technically, this is caused by misalignment of the fish pixmap drawings themselves, which leads to non-optimal performance. Other than this, the module works fine. This is likely to be fixed in future versions of the module. Startup Manager® When using Startup Manager to change the order that your INITs are launching, and if the 8•24 GC rocket appears on the second row, there will be slight screen corruption when the rocket flies. NOTE: This is an on-screen artifact only, and does not affect performance or data. "ECS" or Engineering Capturing System® When running the "Symbol" application, you will see 3 extra horizontal lines when the screen depth is set to 8-bits per pixel. A general note about games Most games will not be accelerated by the 8Â¥24GC card. Technically, this is most often caused by the developer not using GWorlds for animation. KNOWN APPLE SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY ISSUES WITH THE 8•24 GC CARD If you are using Chinese Talk II please make sure it is version 1.1 or greater. Please note that the 8•24GC card does not accelerate the display of TrueType® fonts. For optimum performance, install the appropriate size bit-map The software control panel "8•24 GC" that ships with the Macintosh Display Card 8•24 GC enables graphics acceleration with the card. --------------------------- Apple has identified a bug in version 7.0 of the "8•24 GC" control panel. Although graphics are accelerated, the overall system slows because the cache is disabled. Performance is not enhanced, and in some cases performance is degraded. Which systems are affected? --------------------------- The problem affects Macintosh 68030-based systems -- specifically the Macintosh IIcx, IIci, IIsi, and IIfx -- with Macintosh Display Cards 8•24 GC installed. IMPORTANT NOTE: In 68040-based systems, the Macintosh Display Card 8•24 GC disables acceleration. Apple continues to recommend that Quadra owners use the on-board video. The 8•24 GC control panel is not designed for use with 68040-based systems. What is the fix? ---------------- The fix is a new control panel: "8•24 GC" version 7.0.1. The new control panel fully supports System 7 (with or without 7.0 Tune-Up), and corrects the data cache problem in 68030-based Macintosh systems. System requirements ------------------- To use version 7.0.1 of the "8•24 GC" control panel, you need: • System 7.0 or greater (do not use System 6.0.x). • At least 3MB RAM. Installation ------------ Here's how to install "8•24 GC" 7.0.1 in a 68030-based Macintosh. 1) Drag the "8•24 GC" icon into the System folder on your startup disk. System 7 will place it in the Control Panels folder for you. 2) Restart your Macintosh. A picture of a rocket will move up your screen, indicating that the software has been installed correctly and acceleration is enabled. If the rocket does not move up your screen, appearing instead with a red line through it, there has been a problem installing the software. Check your Display Card 8•24 GC manual for troubleshooting information. Copyright 1992-1994, Apple Computer, Inc.