Mastodawn

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

A new thread 🧵:
I bought a job-lot of ISA and VLB video cards (and a random legacy PCI one). They arrived today as you can see the packaging was absolutely terrible, they shoved all 9 cards into an anti-static bag and hoped for the best (Grr😡), What's wrong with these sellers?

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Jeez, wish me luck peeps 😭

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

No loose or damaged parts floating about, so before I go any further I'm going to closely inspect every card and then give them a quick IPA clean.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Here's the 5x VLB cards:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

So, I bought the lot for the VLB cards, but damn there's a Tseng Labs ET4000AX ISA card in here! If this works, I've doubled my money in value on its own. Talk about silver tuna, I'm never this lucky!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Jeez, there's a Paradise PVGA1A Professional in here with the 4x Oscillators, damn!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

The only physical damage from the poor packaging is on a VLB card, where the traces have been scratched, I'll check it over, but doesn't look like any have been cut.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

So I've decided I can't wait to see if the Tseng works, to test the VLB's I'll need my 486 rebuild, which I'll need to get out of storage. So I'm going to use this Pentium III board with a 16bit ISA slot to do some testing:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Eeek (in a good way) 😍

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

The Tseng ET4000AX works, well so far, more testing needed, also hopefully I can add more RAM too!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Check-It seems happy, all the tests passed, looking great!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

This thing is so crisp! Crystal Caves 3:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

MS-DOS gaming heaven RN ☺️

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Quake in standard resolution mode:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Quake in maximum (Dos) resolution mode:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

I'm pleased that the Paradise video card also works well too, passed all the Check-It tests.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Unfortunately the Trident TVGA9000 ISA card is dead, the machine won't even post with it inserted, I'll try to diagnose this at a later date.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

The PCI Advance Logic ALG2302.A works and it will be good as a spare, I have too many PCI cards as it is, but nice that it works.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Time to test the VLB cards, this system didn't come with a VLB video card, so I need to check the manual to see if there are any related jumpers.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

Well there are two jumpers related to the VL Bus:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾

I have 4 of these Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 cards and none of them are working. The machine does post, but no video output at all. I've even taken the bracket off so it sits lower, but it's a no go unfortunately.
What a shame 😞

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

This Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 card, however.....

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

We have a win! 👍

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 5, 2024

I'm installing dos 6.22, before putting it through its paces, but I've not seen any corruption etc, looks ok so far.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

Happy Friday folks, I'm testing the difference between my Cirrus Logic VLB card and Tseng ISA card, before making my final Video card selection on this 486 build

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

First up is the Tseng, 25.6 FPS on my 486DX2 66Mhz:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

Now for the VLB Cirrus Logic card, that's an impressive performance bump!
40.0FPS!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

I had a CF card with Windows 95, so I gave it a whirl, impressively responsive for 8MB of RAM!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

Does it run DOOM I hear you say?
Heck yes it does and VERY well indeed!

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

Only one thing for it now, the all-in-one retro sound solution by absolute legend @polpo Ian Scott aka Polpo, the PicoGUS:

Sekhen Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin @polpo
Does my eyes deceive me, or is that an 8-bit ISA card?
That's something I haven't seen in a loooooong time.

Alexander Knochel Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin I fail to see how ego.shooters improved in a meaningful way.since then ;)

deFraid Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin so... You run xp from like a 16 Gb CF card with 8 Mb of ram running somewhat slower than the CF itself ? Am I getting this right ? :)

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

@defred Windows 95

deFraid Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin my bad, the point still stand ;)

@Gammitin sadly @OS1337 will likely need at least 16MB RAM...

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

@kkarhan @OS1337 looks interesting

@Gammitin well, OS/1337 is just a little project where I aim to build a minimalist #toxbox+#musl / #Linux distro as a basis for clean, reproduceable and auditable systems.

I.e. an #SSH-#Terminal or similar #Firmware or a #Rescue-Linux system...

Rafaelito 🦤Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin
Tough choice! After it became obvious that Commodore was going down in flames, I built my first PC. I managed to score an et4000 out of a bin of loose cards for $10! I'm fairly certain that any VLB card will outperform the tseng, but after getting 1024x768 with 256 colors for $10, I've got a soft spot for tseng labs. 😁

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Dec 6, 2024

@ipxfong my Tseng is going in my favourite 386 build, it deserves it! 👍

Alexander Knochel Dec 5, 2024

@Gammitin My first DOS <3
it served us well for many years

kajer :unknown:Dec 5, 2024

@Gammitin My peak 486 was a 66DX in a VLB motherboard 16MB, with a 2MB Genoa video card, some adaptec VLB scsi card, and a VLB serial/parallel IO card.

then pentiums and PCI cheapened the whole experience.

Phil M0OFX Dec 6, 2024

@kajer @Gammitin You might be the only person I've ever met who misses the days of making I/O, DMA and IRQ tables to fix conflicts... It's certainly an experience but I'd file it with "thank god PCI came along to free us from this"

Phil M0OFX Dec 6, 2024

@Gammitin Sorry, I wasn't sure if you were asking for repair tips? Edge connector would be where I'd start, and I'm starting to see VGA cards with bad RAM chips. I'd also check the 74xx logic chips and VGA BIOS ROMs.