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VGA feature connector.

inakito

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Does anyone remember any card that could be attached to the feature connector on VGA cards? If so, Which was the function of the card?.

Inaki.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_connector

Basically it allows another card to transfer data rapidly in and out of VGA memory

3D accelerators or overlay cards sometimes used it

The Wiki entry is not quite right. Most feature connectors were output only - carrying the same data that is being sent to the DAC / connector. I don't doubt many feature connector based products were overlay cards - i.e. take the video in from the VGA card, overlay and output it on it's own connector. However I don't think you can do any input on a feature connector.
 
I have a capture card that plugs into the older edge connector video cards like the Paradise VGA card and the VIP card for the Forte VFX1 that plugs into the newer pin header connectors like on my Geforce 2 which I swear must be the last video card manufactured to even support the feature connector.

Edited: Actually, I also seem to recall I have a Matrox card with a TV tuner that links using the feature connector, that's one of the rare bi-directional configurations.
 
Edited: Actually, I also seem to recall I have a Matrox card with a TV tuner that links using the feature connector, that's one of the rare bi-directional configurations.

I have a Matrox video card that is tethered to a TV tuner/video capture card, but it uses two ribbon cables, so I don't know if either of them follow the VGA feature connector standard -- or maybe one does, and the other cable is used as the input from the TV/capture card to the video card.

A similar arrangement was used in the late '90s to connect the video card to an external MPEG2 decoder card, to allow DVD playback before computers had CPUs powerful enough to decode the DVD video in software.
 
I have a Matrox video card that is tethered to a TV tuner/video capture card, but it uses two ribbon cables, so I don't know if either of them follow the VGA feature connector standard -- or maybe one does, and the other cable is used as the input from the TV/capture card to the video card.

A similar arrangement was used in the late '90s to connect the video card to an external MPEG2 decoder card, to allow DVD playback before computers had CPUs powerful enough to decode the DVD video in software.

The feature connector was mostly used for video overlay applications. It was mostly for TV tuner cards and MPEG decoder cards. Some companies developed extensions with two-way communication. ATI's "AMC" connector was popular on their Mach64 and early Rage based cards. It was used for video capture add-ons.

There was also a newer standard called the "VESA Advanced Feature Connector" that came on some 1990s S3 cards. It looked similar to a wide-SCSI connector and wasn't really used for anything.
 
Didn't the Voodoo 2 do something similar, except through the external VGA connection? It would let some other card handle the 2d work, and then take over on any 3d requirements. You would connect the 2D card's VGA out to an input on the 3D card, and then the 3D card VGA out to the monitor.
 
Didn't the Voodoo 2 do something similar, except through the external VGA connection? It would let some other card handle the 2d work, and then take over on any 3d requirements. You would connect the 2D card's VGA out to an input on the 3D card, and then the 3D card VGA out to the monitor.

I used to have a Voodoo2 card like that. Finding a VGA cable short enough not to make a mess was the most difficult part of the setup. It was pretty no-nonsense, so long as your drivers were good. QuakeGL ran great on it.

The Voodoo2 also supported SLI via its own sort of 'feature connector', so if you were rolling in money at the time you'd actually have three video cards running in in 1998, a feat which still isn't all that common today.
 
Voodoo 2's ran passive (VGA signal from video card went in and went straight out again to the monitor) until something needed to use the GLide driver, then it switched to the onboard framebuffer and DAC to display 3D. The SLI connector was only used to split the processing load in half by dedicating a card to odd and even scanlines. It is in no way comparable to the VESA feature connector.
 
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