Tried to clean the contacts on the no-POST one? Does your 386 emit beeps without video card (it should)? For the missing pin hole you can either drill a hole, get an adapter (nothing complicated really) or cut the pin out of a cable (this cable will then not be fully DDC compatible anymore so use a spare one).

I once tried my standard ISA VGA card in a P3 board, and got video.
I reckon you can basically try ISA VGA cards out on any board that has real ISA slots. Just be sure to set it correctly in the BIOS. Can't remember exactly what setting it was but it had something to do with the AGP 1st/PCI 1st thingy.

I second the idea to clean the contacts. I always use a paper cloth with some rubbing alcohol (the type that comes in a bottle at your local supermarket for very cheap).

Could you give a schematic of which pin is filled in? Compare it to a pinout of standard VGA so you know which pin is missing. Perhaps that pin isn't even needed?

What beep codes do you get from the non-posting card? Tried it in another motherboard yet?

I have cleaned the contacts of the non POST card. I also attached a speaker to the PCI/ISA 486 mobo that I am testing it with. Please note, I have no 386 mobo at the moment - I'm waiting for it to arrive. I still get no POST. I hear 4 beeps: long beep, short beep short beep, *very* tiny pause, then short beep.

The keyboard lights flash correctly, as if the mobo thinks there is nothing wrong with the video card ?? At the moment, I haven't tried another mobo. Perhaps I should do that soon...

If I look at the vga connector on the other card, it's pin number 9 which is filled in. You can see where pin number 9 is here.

Thanks a lot for any further advice...

Another possibly useful clue, don't use hybrid PCI/ISA slots.
Tried an ATI Mach32 ISA in one of these slots yesterday and didn't work (got no beep/POST either) ... in the non-hybrid ports it worked perfectly

Try every ISA slot possible. The BIOS options shouldn't matter, as it's your only video card in the system. Just to be sure reset the CMOS settings so you're trying with default options. The beep code is the standard one for missing video adapter. The keyboard lights act normally because the machine is in fact booting. The mobo boots OK, even if it doesn't have a video card.

Try with your finger pushing it to one or the other side, so the card now positions slighty diagonally, and boot the machine like that (with your finger still pushing the card) and see what happens (push in a part of the PCB that doesn't have circuitry in it). Try booting it pushing the card to either side (left and right, so 2 boot tries needed).

Pin 9 was the key pin a long time ago. Is there a hole there that's filled in ? or is there no hole at all ? I'm referring to the pin 9. If you're sure it's not just a broken VGA monitor cable pin that stucked there, then the best solution would be to drill a hole there, or broken pin 9 on your monitor cable, but as hal said it would not be fully DDC compatible anymore.

I have tried the ATI card in 3 mobos. No POST. Unfortunately, all 3 mobos are 486 mobos. 2 of them are PCI/ISA, and the 3rd mobo is PCI/VLB/ISA. I feel certain that it should have worked in this mobo. It's an Asus PVI-486SP3 revision 1.8 mobo. I am sure that Vogons user 5u3 has got an ISA video card to work in this mobo. I tried the ISA slot which is also the VLB slot, and then I tried the ISA slot next to it.

I changed a few jumpers on the ATI card. I set it to 16-bit, it was on 8-bit. I also set the pixel clock jumper to "clock bar", it was on "clock". The IRQ is set to disabled. I wonder, do I need to set "assign IRQ to VGA" = Disabled in the BIOS? I think it's set to Enabled at the moment. Also, the EEPROM jumper is set to Enabled. I wonder, do I set this to Disabled, and then run any kind of install.exe program to reprogram the card?

Thanks a lot for any help! 😀 PS, unmei220 I have just read your post, and I will retry my booting attempts and use your advice. Also, regarding the other card with the "filled in" hole number 9 - it's definitely a "factory made" part of the design, and not a stuck cable pin.

Could you get us a picture of the VGA socket with that one "blocked" pin?
If I remember correctly not all pins are used on the HD DB 15 socket. At least one of my older CRT monitors has 1 or 2 pins missing at the connector.

If it's an unused pin, I'm sure you could build an adapter so you could physically connect your monitor.

EDIT: just read your reply. Appears pin9 is a line supplying or recieving 5volts (might be used for monitor detection on some gfx cards?) If your desperate, I'd just pull it out of the cable (if you have a spare that is) ... as that is the pin missing on the connector of my CRT monitor (which has worked fine the past 15 years).

Weird... I have one of those Paradise cards and it works OK. I shouldn't worry about the IRQ settings. As far as I recall, they don't have any special program to configure them.

Did you check in the ATI one the big chip, for stickied together pins ?
I edited my post above at the same time you were posting. Pin 9 was the key pin, so it's "OK" there's not a hole there. But I confess it's the first time I see one card with it actually missing.

EDIT: did you have the ISA clock BIOS setting in those mobos, between specs ? That's why I suggested you try with default BIOS options.

I believe the problem with that ATI card is that it is not a standalone video card, but a coprocessor card. I'm pretty sure it requires a separate VGA card connected by way of the 26-pin feature connector.

Firstly, thanks very much to everyone for their interesting comments. I will reply to every comment, and do further testing first thing tomorrow morning. Currently, I am overwhelmed with tiredness!

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I believe the problem with that ATI card is that it is not a standalone video card, but a coprocessor card. I'm pretty sure it requires a separate VGA card connected by way of the 26-pin feature connector.

Oh wow, that's fascinating! I am looking at the ATI card now, and the chip on the bottom right hand corner says COPR. Does that mean co-processor, I wonder. Also, that chip also says ACCELTR. Perhaps that means accelerator? Is this some kind of pre 3dfx Voodoo era thing, whereby you had an accelerator card connected to another standard VGA card?

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I believe the problem with that ATI card is that it is not a standalone video card, but a coprocessor card. I'm pretty sure it requires a separate VGA card connected by way of the 26-pin feature connector.

Yes, you are right. Here's one on ebay, with the cable -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=310176455372

Is this some kind of pre 3dfx Voodoo era thing, whereby you had an accelerator card connected to another standard VGA card?

Basically yes, except without the 3d. It's one of the "Windows accelerators" that became somewhat popular in the early '90s, that would offer hardware acceleration for certain GUI functions... regular VGA cards at the time were basically just dumb framebuffers. Of course, the separate accelerator cards pretty quickly became obsolete once those functions got integrated into VGA chipsets.

The 'all-in-one' version of that card you have is the ATI Graphics Ultra... basically has the Mach8 accelerator chip plus an ATI VGA Wonder chip together on one board... including separate RAM, 512K DRAM for the VGA and 1MB VRAM for the Mach8. I have one in my 386, decent DOS performance and quite fast in Win31, though like all ATI stuff ever made, the drivers are a PITA.

The 8514 Ultra would pair pretty well with that Paradise card, if you can find a way to adapt the old-style card-edge feature connector to the newer style 26-pin header.

shock__ wrote:

Could you get us a picture of the VGA socket with that one "blocked" pin?

Sure, I will try out "macro mode" on my camera tomorrow morning. Never tried that before! 😀

unmei220 wrote:

Did you check in the ATI one the big chip, for stickied together pins ?

+

EDIT: did you have the ISA clock BIOS setting in those mobos, between specs ? That's why I suggested you try with default BIOS options.

The card is in excellent condition, and there are no visible defects. Also, I set the BIOS options to typical "fail safe" options.

However, it now looks like this ATI card is a special card needing another VGA card to function correctly. D'oh! And I've just bought 2 of them, thinking they were just normal video cards. 😦

I can confirm ATi Ultra is indeed a coprocessor only, though certain Ultra models allowed the addition of a VGA core. I believe these units were known as ATi Ultra +VGA. Soon after ATi released the Graphics Ultra, which was basically the same as the Ultra +VGA with the VGA module built in. You should still keep the card though, because it's an interesting (and somewhat uncommon) piece of history.

If you have a motherboard with built-in VGA and a VESA Feature headers like mine (or a VGA card with VESA Feature headers), this card could be a "helping hand" for the other card.

Maybe this card provides some special options like 3D rendering capability.

Thanks a lot for the additional advice, people. I'm definitely going to get this special card to work. I'm sure I've got something with a VESA header on it, somewhere! BTW, I took a pic of the other HP card, using macro mode on my crappy camera.

No special 3D support on the Ultra "Mach8" chip. It just does accelerated graphics in 4 and 8-bit colour depths. It should be quite a bit faster than whatever you get with a trident, cirrus or tseng however.

Speaking of interesting and uncommon pieces of history, I was browsing eBay today and ran across a very odd variant of the 8514 Ultra... an ISA/Microchannel combo version.

I never knew such a thing existed...

Some of my bits for a 386 build have arrived, including this Diamond Stealth VRAM ISA video card. I just noticed something on it - it's got the same number of pins (top right in pic below), as seen on the ATI 8514 card mentioned earlier in this thread. I could be in luck! 😀

For a cable, I could use the cable included in the auction listing I bought, which is just another ATI 8514 that I inadvertently bought, thinking it was a regular video card.