• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
  • From now on we will require that a prefix is set for any items in the sales area. We have created regions and locations for this. We also require that you select a delivery option before posting your listing. This will hopefully help us streamline the things that get listed for sales here and help local people better advertise their items, especially for local only sales. New sales rules are also coming, so stay tuned.

Good place to buy VRAM chips

S

Shadow Lord

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
3,234
Location
California
Hello All,

I just got my hands on an Elsa Winner 1000 S3 928 EISA video card. Per the seller the card uses VRAM chips and are marked as: MT42C4256Z-71. Per statson.org the card uses 8 256Kx4 chips in ZIP packaging. However, the only datasheet I can find is for MT42C4256Z-7L which is a DRAM part. In any case, I did some searching on google and although I can find the chips (both the -71 and -7L but god knows with these sebsites) most of the sales seem to be geared toward large quantities and not a guy who needs 8. Any suggestions for a good and cheap source of the VRAM/DRAM? Thanks!
 
Last edited:
I'm not familiar with that card specifically, but I am pretty sure that S3 928 can use either DRAM or VRAM. DRAM was sometimes found in zip packages, but I usually see them used more on motherboards than on graphics cards.
 
These VRAM are pretty special, if I read the datasheet right. Includes a 512x4 SAM (shift register). I thought I had a match when I found some ZIP NEC 256x4 VRAM, but the pinout is slightly different.

It's hard enough to find legacy SOJ VRAM; the ZIP-package was even less common.

Good luck.
 
Hmmm... For some reason I am not getting e-mail telling me of replies. Thanks Unknown K, and Chuck(G). The card should arrive in the next few days and I'll take a closer look at it. Its no biggie if I can't get the VRAM as the card comes w/ 1MB already but it would be nice to have the higher res. Plus it is my understanding that the 928 did much better w/ 2MB of VRAM then just 1MB.
 
Well found a place that has the chips in and can ship out in 2 days. Only problem is they want $14 per chip. Ridiculous...
 
channelmaniac,

hmmm, I wonder if it makes a difference? I mean there will be a tiny performance hit but this is DOS stuff we are talking about. Anybody, w/ more knowledge care to comment?
 
I say, try them. If they won't work, they won't. No performance hits--if the hardware needs 70nsec chips, it won't work reliably with 80nsec. Won't ruin anything to try.
 
Just make sure the voltages are correct so you don't fry anything. These days if you want to upgrade RAM you are stuck ripping it out of another video card of the same vintage.

One of my VLB cards (Matrox I think) had 2 different speed RAM chips from the factory, whatever they could get cheapest most likely.
 
Well the VRAM chips arrived, installed and the system booted just fine. No magic smoke, no snap crackle, pop. But not really sure if it is working. I tested the system using a DOS video test program: svgatest.exe. Supposedly it tests all VESA 1.2 modes. However, after the "upgrade" I can not access any new modes (i.e. 640x480x24bit). This could be due to the atrocious VESA support on this card. I tried UniVBE. However, it can not recognize the card, which is real strange. It worked fine when I used the ISA connector in an ISA bus. UniVESA finds the card and reports 2MB of RAM. However, not sure if this is because the switch on the card is now set to 2MB (so it would report 2MB regardless of the amout of RAM) or because it actually detected that much RAM. Anyone can recommend a good/great REAL MODE (DOS) dx program? I am going to test out PC-Config and HWiNFO. I remember the CheckIt test program from a long time ago but it is WinNT based now...

Update: PC-Config also reports 2MB
 
Last edited:
Chuck(G) said:
I don't know if this will help.

The issue could well be an anemic driver and not anything with your VGA card.
Click to expand...

Thanks Chuck(G). I'll give it try tonight but not sure if it will work on my system as the card only has VBE 1.2 built in and the non-windows version requires VE 2.0. I agree with you though that it seems to be the driver more than anything else!
 
Sorry for the late fu post but Real Life stepped in :D!

Anyhow, I tried the test recommended by Chuck(G) and unfortunately the test will not run since the card does not have built in VBE 2.0 support. I did find another test x-vesa.com This one identified the card, revision of VESA, however it states 2MB of memory and 4MB of memory detected. No idea why? It also gives a nice list of all the modes the card supports and the only 24bit mode supported seems to be 640x480. At 1280x1024 the card only does 8bit. The program also does some VRAM testing. I ran some of the segmental tests and everything was OK. However, after I ran a FULL VRAM test overnight I got a garbled screen and had to reboot. So maybe some of the VRAM is bad?
 
channelmaniac,

The computer did not lockup. The display became garbled up. Exiting out of the test screen brought me to a garbled DOS prompt. I rebooted and everything returned to normal.
 
Curious... you seem to be testing to see if it hit 2mb, and if it's all accessible. Have you tried pulling out the 70ns RAM that came with the card and using the 80ns RAM you purchased in a 1mb config, ensuring that it works properly with that scenario?
 
Maverick1978 said:
Curious... you seem to be testing to see if it hit 2mb, and if it's all accessible. Have you tried pulling out the 70ns RAM that came with the card and using the 80ns RAM you purchased in a 1mb config, ensuring that it works properly with that scenario?
Click to expand...

No can do its soldered in. The card seems to be working in everyday use. At this time, I am somewhat satisfied w/ it and in all honestly getting the HDD and 5 1/4 floppy working is more of priority... I'll probably revisit this issue when I have a HDD setup so it is easy to run tests, and cun run windows...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top