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WTB: Good 2MB ISA Graphics Card

ScanDisk

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2017
Messages
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Niagara Falls, Canada Eh?
As the title says, I am looking for a good video card, with 2MB of VRAM, to replace the ATI VGA Wonder (1mb) in my Compaq Prolinea 4/66.

I'm looking to do a bit of an upgrade, and the video card is the weak point of the system.

I tried searching for things like the Diamond Speedstar 64, and some cards by Cirrus Logic, etc but the only ISA cards I have found have either 256kb/512kb/ or 1mb (mostly 512k and 1mb though).

I have heard that there are indeed ISA graphics cards that can have 2mb of vram, but seeing the lack of results on ebay, I have decided to search within the community, which is what I am doing here.

So, if you have something I could be interested in, or know where I can get one, etc, it'd be appreciated.
 
I've got several Trident cards but I think they've all got 1 MB:


1) JAX-8212-V2 TVGA8900C boxed with manual and software (not new but only used for one year)


2) 8900CL-C


3) MVGA-T8900CL supports 1280 x 1024


Both 2 and 3 above have 32 bit Core and 32 bit Memory bus width.
 
I could be interested in the MVGA-T8900CL, at 1280X1024, how many colors can it support?

Currently my VGA Wonder seems to only support 16 colors at 1024x768, I am currently running at 800x600x256 because of that, which is good because on the 14 inch monitor I am using 1024x768 would look to small anyways.

I really want to be able to do 800x600 in more than 256 colors though, like maybe 16 or 24bit, etc.
 
Do keep in mind that many ISA cards come with pallette DACs that are limited to 256 colors even with the requisite video RAM.
 
Do keep in mind that many ISA cards come with pallette DACs that are limited to 256 colors even with the requisite video RAM.

Thanks, good info. I am really interested in more info on the card Stone mentioned. I remember being told by some that my card should support 800x600 in more than 256 colors, but that I don't have enough video ram from others, so I am confused. However the palette DAC thing could be an explanation for why it doesn't.
 
Diamond Speedstar 64's are over $100+, not that common.
Anything with 2MB of RAM will cost some money.
Are you looking for a Windows 3.x card or a DOS gaming card?
 
I just remembered the reason I have a video card in it, is because I couldn't get the right drivers for the on-board graphics.

however I just looked at the graphics chip, and it's either a Tseng Labs ET4000/w32 or ET4000/w321 or ET4000. According to wikipedia, I there is a /w32i but not a /w321 so I gather it's a /w32i then? I can't tell if the character at the end is a "1" or an "i"?

This is the best photo I could get without having to disconnect literally all the cards in it.

Assuming I can finally get this working, I won't need to buy another card at all, and I'll be happy to have an ISA slot free for another thing, like maybe a NIC or TV tuner, something cool.
 

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@Stone interesting.

As for the Tseng graphics on the board, I downloaded drivers specifically marked as et4000 w32/i/p and they installed, but the same thing happened as with other drivers I tried before (including ones I downloaded before from the website Unknown_k linked), it essentially works but with small glitches, such as the title bar on windows not being solid, but instead having dots in it.

Like shown in the attachments.

I don't know if maybe compaq needs proprietary drivers, or maybe something is wrong with the chip or with the video somewhere else on the board?

Anyways if I can't fix this, then Stone's card may be good to get me a better color depth, at least.

Hopefully I can fix it though, to free up that ISA slot, I really would like for a tv tuner to be there instead lol.
 

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What resolution and color depth are you using? Get a good camera in a lit room and take a picture of the motherboard where the Tseng chip is AND the surrounding video memory so we can tell if you have 1MB or 2MB of video RAM.
 
@Stone interesting.

As for the Tseng graphics on the board, I downloaded drivers specifically marked as et4000 w32/i/p and they installed, but the same thing happened as with other drivers I tried before (including ones I downloaded before from the website Unknown_k linked), it essentially works but with small glitches, such as the title bar on windows not being solid, but instead having dots in it.

Like shown in the attachments.

I don't know if maybe compaq needs proprietary drivers, or maybe something is wrong with the chip or with the video somewhere else on the board?

Anyways if I can't fix this, then Stone's card may be good to get me a better color depth, at least.

Hopefully I can fix it though, to free up that ISA slot, I really would like for a tv tuner to be there instead lol.

If it comes down to a slot, you can always get a USB TV dongle. Or, like I use now, an HDHomeRun box for an outside antenna. I do have a Hauppauge PCI card but it's only good for analog.
 
The issue happens in both 800x600x256 and 1024x768x256.

A friend of mine told me to look at the video bios using debug and told me how to do it, and I discovered it is in fact using a compaq video bios, because it says CPQ in the string, which means I need to track down the special compaq version of the drivers. I imagine tracking down the proper softpaq will be a pain the the rear for sure though, lol.

Edit: I just downloaded the softpaq that the website Unknown_k linked had as the tseng drivers, I will try those again, though I seem to remember using this website from a long time ago.

I guess if this doesn't work, then maybe it will be time to remove the sound card, and take a proper photo as requested.
 
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Tried both the 0678 and 0425 softpaq, one is the graphics accelerator, and one is the actual driver, the same issue goes, even after loading the vesa driver before windows... my friend is completely stumped too as these are the official files from compaq.

Anyways, I do have a boxed copy of Windows 95 Upgrade edition which will let me try 95 and then quickly revert back to 3.1. Gonna be interesting to see how 95 behaves, maybe it will already have drivers for it.

I got those pictures too, one is a general picture of the area, and another is a close up of what I think are the chips, being they are right next to the actual tseng chip.
 

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The intergrated video on this system should be local bus, which would make it quite a bit faster than any ISA card you could get for the system. The ET4000/32i should support 16.7 million colours at 640x480 and 64k colours at 800x600 with 1MB DRAM which is what you probably have installed. This is assuming of course that the RAMDAC for the card can handle it, but you haven't yet provided a picture of that. From what I recall 1024x768 graphics modes on this card might be interlaced, so you might want to avoid those.

What kind of VGA Wonder do you have in there now? There were quite a few variants, and the last two supported high (VGA Wonder XL) or true colour modes (VGA Wonder XL24) in 640x480 and 800x600. With 1MB, those should also support 256 colours at 1024x768 non-interlaced, but at a fairly low refresh rate.
 
Sorry for the late response, I will get a photo of the ramdac soon (once I find out what a ramdac is, I don't know what that is).

I did find the proper drivers for it, and it supports up to 1024x768x256, and 800x600x256 at least that's the options the current drivers give me.

i'll update this later again.
 
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