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VGA Cards that work in 5150 board.

P

prime

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2009
Messages
153
Location
Coventry, UK
Hi all,

I thought whilst I had my vintage PC gear out I'd test the 8 and 16 bit VGA cards I have in my recently repaired 5150 board to see if they worked.
Below are pictures of the cards that work.

Modem7, if you want to pinch these for your compatibility list feel free.

The first two are 8 bit cards, I have a couple of the WDC ones actually built into machines and they work well.

The first one has "Copyright WAVE Mate Inc", but no model no or anything, main chip seems to be Intel.
wave-mate-018-037.jpg

This one is a WDC board, There are two similar boards on http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/ that appear to be the 16 bit version of this.
WDC-paradise-pvga1a-jk.jpg

Bioes for the above two : View attachment 8bit.zip

The next bunch are 16 bit cards all of which seemed to work in their default configuration.

These two are marked OCTEC, one has a Triedent 8800 and the other a Trident 8900 chip
oktek-trident-8800.jpg
oktek-trident-8900.jpg

Bioses : View attachment 16bit-octec.zip


oak-vga-ko77.jpg
CL-GD5401.jpg
Video-seven-vga16e.jpg

16 bit bioses View attachment 16bit.zip

This last card would only work with a V20 CPU so I suspect it uses 186/286 instructions.
Marked Wang 3050
wang-3050.jpg

Bios View attachment 16bit-wang.zip

Cheers.

Phill.
 
Last edited:
And here's the BIOS files....

Humm for some reason it won't let me upload the zip file with the bioses in.....

Cheers.

Phill.
 
This forum won't attach anything larger than 99k. Perhaps split the zips up.
You might also try tinyupload instead.

Also, do you have the exact names of each of these cards?
 
I also have VGA Card (OAK 16bit ISA / WD 16bit ISA).
I think most of 16bit ISA VGA works on IBM PC 5150 / 5160 motherboard.
 
Stone said:
I have a stack of 16-bit ISA VGA cards that don't.

And, I have several that work fine on the 5160 but not at all on the 5150. :)
Click to expand...
Stone, have you documented these somewhere? It would even be good to have a list of cards known NOT to work.

There was a thread recently where someone else had a card that works on a 5160 but not 5150. But I still find that odd as the only significant difference I am aware of is a 5150 reserved range of I/O ports (that cause problem for IDE related stuff). Of course the first rev 5150 BIOS doesn't count because a later version is a well known minimum requirement.
 
SomeGuy said:
This forum won't attach anything larger than 99k. Perhaps split the zips up.
You might also try tinyupload instead.

Also, do you have the exact names of each of these cards?
Click to expand...

That seems insane, especially considering the size of the image files :)

Cheers.

Phill.
 
If you look closely you will notice that all large image attachments are recompressed by the forum software so they are about 99k. With JPGs that is usually not too noticeable, but it messes up large PNGs. Just re-download the images you posted above and look at the file size.
 
SomeGuy said:
Stone, have you documented these somewhere? It would even be good to have a list of cards known NOT to work.

There was a thread recently where someone else had a card that works on a 5160 but not 5150. But I still find that odd as the only significant difference I am aware of is a 5150 reserved range of I/O ports (that cause problem for IDE related stuff). Of course the first rev 5150 BIOS doesn't count because a later version is a well known minimum requirement.
Click to expand...
I mentioned that not to long ago. (It's version 3.)

I will put a list together of what I have that doesn't work on my 5160 and the card I have that does work on the 5160 but not on the 5150.
 
Thanks very much for BIOS.
I think "CL-GD5401.ROM" seems to be strange. (maybe bad dumped or bad combined.)

I attached fixed rom.
 

Attachments

  • CL-GD5401.zip
    12.3 KB · Views: 1
Last edited:
prime said:
This last card would only work with a V20 CPU so I suspect it uses 186/286 instructions.
Marked Wang 3050
View attachment 30945

Bios View attachment 30964
Click to expand...

I have that card too and just like yours it's got a bunch of those patch wires. I guess they had problems with manufacturing these which might also explain why my card died of what appeared to be bad VRAM. In text mode it would suddenly emit spots of random characters with random attributes and a CLS would fix it initially but as time went by (over the course of a couple of weeks) it would appear more frequently and with bigger spots until it was unusable and I had to replace it. Which is kind of sad because it's the original VGA card for my Wang Microsystems PC 250/16.
 
I’m sorry for my very bad english and for my stupid question.
I have a Paradise PVGA1A Card and an IBM XT board.
Must I load the 8bit BIOS in a 27C256 EPROM and replace the original chip on my VGA Card?
Can I use it on a 5160 board??
Please help me, thank you very much from Italy ;-)
Pino
 
p.giaquinto said:
I have a Paradise PVGA1A Card and an IBM XT board.
Must I load the 8bit BIOS in a 27C256 EPROM and replace the original chip on my VGA Card?
Can I use it on a 5160 board??
Click to expand...
Welcome to these forums.

'Paradise PVGA1A' is a chip, and an Internet search shows that it was used in quite a few different cards.

Your use of "8bit BIOS" suggests to me that your PVGA1A based VGA card is 16-bit ISA.
And the fact that you are asking questions suggests to me that you tried your VGA card in your IBM XT motherboard, and the card did not work.

I presume that you have switches 5 and 6 on motherboard switch block SW1 both set to on (per [here]).

Does your VGA card work in a 16-bit computer ?

Is there a jumper/switch on the card that you need to change ?

Some 16-bit VGA card's are not designed to work in the IBM XT. Sometimes the reason is software (e.g. card's BIOS), sometimes hardware, sometimes both. So even if you found another BIOS that works on your card, the card may still not work in an IBM XT due to a hardware reason.
 
The ATI VGA Wonder is one of the most versatile cards in terms of software and monitor support.
It's a 16 bit card but works fine in an 8 bit slot.

VGAWonderBoxFrontLower.jpg
VGAWonderBoxRearLowesttest.jpg
VGAWonderModes.jpg
 
Stone said:
Does that include the 5150? That is what this thread is all about.
Click to expand...

Yes , the hardware requirements on the box list PC/XT/AT.
Manual also states it will work in any 8/16 bit slot in an IBM PC/XT/AT
or PS/2 Model 30. Its been awhile but I'm pretty sure I tested mine in a
5150.
 
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