Ah, this is a bit frustrating because I don't have the CL card yet. I only bought it recently, and I'll have to wait up to 10 days to receive it, because of international shipping. Perhaps I ought to wait for it to arrive? In the meantime, I did a search for Trident, and found this thing!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=370347268980 (2 chips)

Edit: And another Trident card, also with 2 chips:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=280620547432

I'm pretty sure what you need are 256Kx16 SOJ FPM chips, 70ns... ones like these. That was pretty much the standard chip at that time, and is what my GD5428 card takes.

Thanks very much for the advice. I've just bought 2. I noticed that seller had other speeds: 50, 60 and 70. I bought a pair of each, for some future exciting retro testing experiments! 😀

http://www.datasheetarchive.com/datasheet-pdf … DSA0015543.html

STB Nitro uses CL GD5434, and these are the chips it uses. Looks like FPM to me.

The missing hole:

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showt … this-video-port

The idea mentioned there is two gender changers in a row and cut the pin off of one.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/VINTAGE-DIAMOND-SPEEDS … =item2eae01fa65

Anonymous Coward wrote:

PreI think others in here have probably already explained how accelerated graphics can help overcome the bandwidth limitations of the ISA bus, by speeding up the way various line draws are performed. You can think of it as bitmapped graphics (VGA) versus vector graphics (8514). Windows 3.1 is an environment where accelerated graphics makes a HUGE difference.

As others have said, having lots of memory helps tremendously with screen resolution and colour depth. Windows 3.1 doesn't really make good use of 256 colour graphics. Personally I find the windows dithering revolting. Having 15-bit, 16-bit and 24-bit colour depths makes the win31 experience so much better. Though you have to keep in mind that there are also quite a few win31 apps that make extensive use of 256 color cycling that won't run under other colour depths.

My all time favourite ISA card for windows is the Mach64 VRAM. The 2MB version is probably all you'll ever need. It offers 1024x768@16-bit colour. I have the 4MB version, which can do 1600x1200@16-bit colour, but it's really too slow to be practical. Probably your best bet is to pick up that CL GD5434 card I mentioned earlier. They're usually not too hard to find, and pretty cheap. Great DOS performance, as well as pretty darn good

Would having one of these cards make video run smoother under windows? Like using some of those ancient avi codecs, I can play the videos on the windows 95 cd but they dont quite run 100% smooth but that probably has more to do with the cpu than the video(ET4000 1meg & 386DX40)?

I've just bought a couple of VGA gender changer adapters. Thanks a lot for that tip! 😀

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

The missing hole:

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showt … this-video-port

The idea mentioned there is two gender changers in a row and cut the pin off of one.

It worked! The great thing is that I didn't have to cut a pin off the M/M adapter. This adapter already had a missing pin, in the location where the "blocked off" hole is located on the VGA card. So, I now have the Paradise VGA card working, as seen in my original post. The signal quality is good too!

However, my system won't work at top speed with this card. The best I can get is 80MHz osci, with the bus at /6 = 13.3MHz. With a 100MHz osci, I can set the bus to /8, which is 12.5MHz. For this setting, 3DBench scores 14.9.

That's to be expected, older ISA cards tend to be less speed tolerant than newer ones, and that Paradise card is pretty ancient... looks like a 1989 date code on the VGA connector. 12-13mhz is pretty good for everyday use, though.

BTW, that's a hell of a VGA cable, where'd you get that sucker?

Hehe! It's a bit of a python! 😉 It's this thing:

http://test.futureshop.co.uk/ixos-xhv625300-t … e-3m-p-839.html (IXOS VGA cable)

I really like 'em. You can get them in various lengths. Mine are 3 metres, but I've seen them advertised in 5m and also 9m.

Holy crap that's expensive! Hell, that thing would double the value of most of the systems I'd be connecting it to. 😳

I think I'll be sticking with the grungy old cables I already have...

After running scandisk a: on my Windows 3.11 WFWG diskettes, and fixing some problems, I now have Win3.11 installed. I know nothing about Windows 3, but I have managed to do 2 things -

1) I got my Diamond Stealth 24 ISA VGA card installed, using a Diamond Stealth Windows 3 driver found on their legacy download webpage. 2) I then connected the ATI 8514 Ultra to the DS24 card, and got the ATI driver installed. So, I'm kind of pleased with myself today.

Now I have the ATI 8514 installed under Windows 3.11, how do I measure its video performance? Are there any Windows 3 video benchmark utils I can run? Thanks a lot for any info. 😀

I have just received the Diamond Speedstar 64 ISA VGA card, as featured in the photo on page 4 of this thread. It works! I'm testing another 386 Contaq mobo ATM, and I've left the factory fitted cache chips alone, for now. So, they're all "slow" 20ns chips, except for the 15ns tag chip. Also for now, I've left the factory fitted 80MHz osci alone.

The DS64 VGA card works, with the mobo bus speed set to maximum. That's 80/4=20MHz. I've got it running in Windows 95. I'm waiting for the RAM chips to arrive, so I can populate the card's 2 empty RAM sockets.

The Speedstar 64 should be faster at accelerated graphics than the Mach8, perhaps even with only 1mb installed.

I downloaded the Windows 3 driver for the Diamond Speedstar64 VGA card, here. Works great. Also, I found a useful benchmarking prog for Windows 3. It's Wintune 2.0, and I discovered it here. Search for "WinTune v2.0 16-bit", because this mdgx website doesn't seem to have /folder names in the browser address bar. Here's Wintune 2.0 in action. I am using a 100 MHz osci, but I only set the mobo bus speed to /8, which means 13.3 MHz.

Oops. My score is the bar at the bottom, which has been chopped off. I don't know why that's happened.

I've always liked wintune 2.0.

Sorry guys, I've had the Diamond Speedstar64 ISA VGA card for a few days now, and I didn't report back about its onboard RAM chips. The 2 built-in RAM chips on this card have the number 70 written on them.

70 means 70ns.

There should a model number written there too.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

70 means 70ns.

There should a model number written there too.

The full info on each chip says:

NEC Japan
424260-70
9503MUO66