Old Toshiba laptop doesn't stretch 640x480 game into full screen

[Lady Eklipse]

Hi everyone!
Recently I have acquired a Toshiba Satellite 335CDT laptop for a very decent price. Mostly I use it for old DOS games, because I don't like solutions like DOSBox or VDMSound and I have never had a proper soundcard on my PC.
The problem with it is that when a game sets its display into 640x480, it leaves black borders on every side of the screen about 1 inch size, making the picture fit pixel by pixel, which is passable and playable, but I would prefer it to go fullscreen.
On the other hand, in pure DOS VGA mode it actually can stretch 320x200 into the full screen, there is even an option for this in BIOS. So why it can't do the same in SVGA for 640x480?
I have tried to force Warcraft II to go into 800x600 with 12noon Display Changer utility, but that didn't work.
The native videocart is C&H 65555 and it has got the proper drivers installed which I got from Toshiba website. I even tried to install ATI Catalyst because I know there is a screen scaling option, but that utility works only with ATI videocards.
My question: Is there any workaround to this? A software decision for Windows 95/98SE would go.
Thanks in advance for any help from you!

[ASSEMbler]

What game? Can you edit the ini files for the game to specify video mode?

[Lady Eklipse]

Warcraft II. It has not option to change resolution, it just always runs with black borders.
Maybe there is another release of this game with 800x600 support, but there are still a plenty of old DOS games with no resolution other than 640x480. I have read that this is how LCD screens work, on CRT monitors any resolution stretches into fullscreen with no problem. So what I'm asking: is there any software to force the screen to scale?

[ASSEMbler]

Warcraft II is designed for 640x480 and cannot scale.

You can only used dosbox and stretch it out a bit, but it will look like crap.

[Lady Eklipse]

THAT is what I'm talking about!
Let it look like crap, I want it to be stretched, but DOSBox is an emulator and playing on an old laptop is just for the sake of avoiding emulation.
Is there a Windows 9x application for stretching 640x480 games into 800x600?
And thank you for replying in my topic!

[splith]

No, you can't just force it to stretch it, you would need a pretty darn good GFX chip to be able to do that, or you'd have to hack the game yourself.

Emulator is the only way really.

[nameless hero]

There should be an option to stretch the image in the bios, something like fullscreen, it´ll look like shit though.

[ASSEMbler]

The graphics are hard coded. However what you can do is if it has a video out, get a cheapo 15 or 17 inch screen and stretch it that way.

[Lady Eklipse]

Thanks again for your replies!

There should be an option to stretch the image in the bios, something like fullscreen, it´ll look like shit though.

Yes, there is such option. But it works only for 320x200 (VGA), but not for 640x480 (SVGA). That's the only question I have on this topic, I wonder, why it can stretch VGA but cannot stretch SVGA?

[ASSEMbler]

Probably not enough vram

[Lady Eklipse]

2 megabytes VRAM to be exact

[LeGIt]

I used to have a Philips monitor that did 800 x 600 so good it looked like 1024 x 768 - maybe you can find something similar for 640 x 480?

Or the other obvious thing set your laptop/desktop/base screen resolution to 640 x 480, then your game, even in windowed mode, should fill the whole screen as the scaling is done automatically?

[Lady Eklipse]

I used to have a Philips monitor that did 800 x 600 so good it looked like 1024 x 768 - maybe you can find something similar for 640 x 480?

Are you speaking of an external monitor?

Or the other obvious thing set your laptop/desktop/base screen resolution to 640 x 480, then your game, even in windowed mode, shoud fill the screen?

That won't do: it leaves black borders always when the display is set to 640x480, no matter if you set it in Windows or just launch a game in this mode. I tried also launching a game under DOS 6.22 but the game still won't stretch.

[Calpis]

The LCD assembly of modern laptops is nothing like an old laptop, they're basically like desktop LCD monitors and include a signal processor and memory to support multiple resolutions on a fixed-pixel display. Old LCD are passive per se, the pixels sent to it are the pixels it displays so for any chance of stretching the video card would have to do it and I don't think that's a feature of any video card even today much less at the dawn of graphics accelerators.

The only reason the laptop can stretch 320x200 is because the graphics controller (which would have been tailored to LCDs back then) must have a special video mode for this purpose. In fact all video modes will actually send out 800x600 physically, but fetch pixels using state machines which simulate 320x200 centered, 320x200 stretched, 640x480 centered etc.

Most likely this special mode repeats each of the 320 horizontal pixels 3 times, then 1 in 5 pixels are thrown away (160) for a total of 800, and each of the 200 lines are repeated simply 3 times for 600. You can't come up with a scheme like that for 640 into 800 or 480 into 600 and true interpolation would have been both economically and technologically prohibitive whereas 320 stretching costs you nothing basically.

I also don't think there's any background-process software (or DOS TSR) out there that can snoop VRAM writes, interpolate to 800x600 and flip to that. And if there were, the compatibility couldn't be much better than an emulator anyway...

Finally, stretching 640 to 800 isn't even something you would want, the difference between the two is so low that there won't be a single pixel that isn't weighted against others meaning all clarity will be lost and the picture mangled.

[Rawit]

I remember that many laptops from that era had a special key for switching between pixel perfect/stretched modes. I had 2 laptops where I could press the fn key + F2 or something to change it. Maybe a similar function is available on yours?

[APE]

Laptop for old school gaming=beyond bad idea.

Get a desktop with a decent video card.

[Lady Eklipse]

I remember that many laptops from that era had a special key for switching between pixel perfect/stretched modes. I had 2 laptops where I could press the fn key + F2 or something to change it. Maybe a similar function is available on yours?

No, it's just in BIOS and it doesn't work for 640x480 for the reasons stated clear enough for me above.

[Lady Eklipse]

Laptop for old school gaming=beyond bad idea.

Get a desktop with a decent video card.

Why is it a bad idea? I already have two desktops with beyond decent video cards. Both have Windows XP installed and have AC 97 sound which makes DOS games impossible on them.
As for this laptop, I got it for a very low price, just couldn't resist. And it plays VGA games fairly well. It won't run Crysis of course.

[APE]

You are seeing exactly why it is a bad idea. I'd run a Pentium 2/3 with a Sound Blaster and Voodoo3 myself. Maybe Voodoo 5 under Win98 SE. The NT drivers are a bit lacking.

Other reasons:
* Batteries are impossible to find and the one built in is heavy and they can (and do) leak.
* 2mb of VRAM is more limiting than you know of right now
* Screens leave much to be desired in terms of quality
* Very limited choice in terms of sound hardware.

[patk]

The video card probably doesnt support scaling. Confirm this by changing the resolution in windows to something very low and see if it scales on your screen