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As CD Shell is starting up, it has the ability to display a splash screen for about five seconds while it is initializing things in the background. The image files used to produce the display can be either 320x240x8 or 640x480x24 resolution.
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The lower resolution images use the Bitmap (BMP) format. Bitmap images can be displayed on any hardware that is 100% VGA compatible. They must be 320 by 240 pixels in size, with an 8-bit color depth (ie. 256 colors). Also, they must be saved in Windows BMP format using run-length encoding (RLE). Bitmap image files must have the extension '.bmp'.
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The higher resolution images use the CD Shell Image (CSI) format. They can only be displayed on hardware that is compatible with VESA BIOS Extensions v1.2 or above. They are 640 by 480 pixels in size, and true-color (ie. 24-bit; approximately 16.7 million colors), so compatible hardware must also be capable of true-color 640x480 mode. Fortunately most recent PC's possess this capability. CSI files are produced using an image conversion tool called 'convert', located in the /tools folder of the CD Shell distribution archive. Convert can either transform a 640x480x24 BMP file into its CSI equivalent, or vice-versa. CD Shell Image files must have the extension '.csi'.
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When CD Shell starts, it will look for a file called 'splash.csi' in the /boot/graphics directory of the disc. If the file is found, then CD Shell will attempt to display the image. If there is an error displaying the image (eg. hardware doesn't meet the compatiblity requirements specified above, corrupted data in the image file, etc.) or if there is no splash.csi file present, then CD Shell will then look for a file called 'splash.bmp' in the /boot/graphics directory. If that file is found then it will be displayed as the splash screen. The image will be displayed for up to five seconds, unless the user presses a key to terminate the splash early (this behavior can be altered). The splash screen can be bypassed by either holding the control key down or turning on caps-lock while CD Shell starts up.
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