Haha my 486 VLB board I used as a KID had that Windows style BIOS. I always thought it was pretty cool. I never needed to change much in the BIOS so the lack of options didn't bother me.

I looked on ebay for VLB cards and I found ZERO. They are all from overseas with price and postage to match. So that PCI board will make my life easier. However the seller has VLB cards as well, he sells some bundles with a bunch of cards, but no clear model numbers.

He will put a lot of stuff online soon, so I will just see what comes up and double check with you guys... Plenty of time so no rush...

This is something that I'm keen on, but for other folks it doesn't seem to bother them, or they don't notice it much. If you compare and contrast a VLB video card, with that of a good quality PCI card, IMO the PCI card will have the better "general image" quality. For example, most of the old STB manufactured PCI cards (various models) have a good general image quality. So too does the Matrox Millenium 1 card. I tried about 15 VLB cards, and I'd say maybe only one of them looked as good, generally speaking, as one of those aforementioned PCI cards.

That makes a lot of sense...

I tried about 15 VLB cards, and I'd say maybe only one of them looked as good, generally speaking, as one of those aforementioned PCI cards.

What sort of VLB cards did you try, though? Did you, for example, put an STB PCI card against an STB VLB card with the same chipset?

Of course the average lower-end Cirrus (or, god forbid, Trident) VLB card isn't going to compare in quality to a nice STB or Matrox PCI card, but that has nothing to do with the bus. Also remember, many VLB cards used chipsets requiring external RAMDAC chips, whereas the majority of PCI cards use newer chipsets with internal RAMDACs... less traces and less component count makes for a cleaner signal, all other things being equal.

> less traces and less component count makes for a cleaner signal

One could argue that having the DAC closer to the digital core induces more noise 😉
Also, the traces from the main chip to the DAC are digital and thus not so prone to disturbances.

I think the bad image quality mainly has to do with the EMI filter built into color output signals and how well video card, monitor and cable impedance match.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I tried about 15 VLB cards, and I'd say maybe only one of them looked as good, generally speaking, as one of those aforementioned PCI cards.

What sort of VLB cards did you try, though? Did you, for example, put an STB PCI card against an STB VLB card with the same chipset?

I did not try this test. I'm looking at my excel hardware testing spreadsheet, and my note taking wasn't that great. Here are my comments, but please note that the following information is horrifyingly dull. I'm sorry that I can't provide any information about the mobos being used in this list of VLB video cards.

tseng vlb
vlb card, spea
vlb card, diamond speedstar
diamond stealth 64 VLB chips missing.
big tseng vlb graphics card - works! Just 1meg
EXCELLENT vlb elsa PRO graphics card. 2 MEG!!!
vlb elsa pro 1000 AVI version, NOT as good as pro version. 2 MEG!
vlb cirrus logic 1mb - not bad!
vlb speedstar pro - 1meg - not all that good.
vlb speedstar pro - 1meg - not all that good. I don’t know, this one seems better than the last one, even though they're identical cards!!!
vlb cirrus logic - only just about works
***binned*** vlb stealth 64
vlb v7-vega -- goes HORRIBLE in windows…Image quality = good not brilliant.
vlb graphics card - ati mach 32 4mb! --- works in text mode, but no games (vga, svga, windows, etc)
vlb graphics card - ati mach 32 4mb! -- has a wire on it, looks bad -- doesn't work
ati mach 64 vlb - has faint banding on it, don’t like it.
tseng vlb 2mb graphics card - it's good, but the ati 32 mach was kind of slightly better on the eyes (but that card really was messed up for games though)
ark vlb graphics card 1mb - might be broken?
tseng vlb 2mb graphics card - broken
cirrus logic VLB graphcis card- it's not too bad, but why use vlb at all, why not just use PCI?
vlb graphics - mv3 - 805 - s3 quadtel. Not bad I suppose.
vlb graphics - mv3 - 805 - s3 quadtel. Not bad I suppose.
tseng vlb with ram (2 I think). very average image.
ati vlb mach 32 with ram, broken
ABANDONING ALL VLB STUFF FROM NOW ON.
VLB graphics card
(freebie) --- BINNED --- vlb graphics card
vlb vid card, cirrus, ok.