I solved the problem about the socketed RAM not being recognised by the VGA card. I have now successfully upgraded the card to 2MB. I used 2 different RAM chips. I found them in a VLB VGA card. The info printed on these chips are:

HY514260B
JC-70
9539A

These chips seem to fit better inside the Kelvin RAM sockets. The other ones that failed seemed to fit less snugly. I can now set the card's resolution to 1280x1024, inside Windows 3. I can also set the refresh rate to an LCD friendly value of 60Hz, for all resolutions (640,800,1024,1280). This appears to be true for both DOS and Windows, according to the DOS based Kscan.exe utility, which is available inside that download link I provided in my original post.

RG100! You rock, Sir! Although I have not used this card before and maybe never will, I respect your dedication in exploring these classic pc hardwares and reflecting on your findings! 😁

You remind me of Sherlock Holmes' unrelenting and dedicated experiments with his chemistry lab. 😁

Thanks a lot! 😀 I hope that I can continue these "quick test" posts. If I can (make the effort to do them), there may be hundreds more of them...

retro games 100 wrote:

I solved the problem about the socketed RAM not being recognised by the VGA card. I have now successfully upgraded the card to […]
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I solved the problem about the socketed RAM not being recognised by the VGA card. I have now successfully upgraded the card to 2MB. I used 2 different RAM chips. I found them in a VLB VGA card. The info printed on these chips are:

HY514260B
JC-70
9539A

These chips seem to fit better inside the Kelvin RAM sockets. The other ones that failed seemed to fit less snugly. I can now set the card's resolution to 1280x1024, inside Windows 3. I can also set the refresh rate to an LCD friendly value of 60Hz, for all resolutions (640,800,1024,1280). This appears to be true for both DOS and Windows, according to the DOS based Kscan.exe utility, which is available inside that download link I provided in my original post.

You're able to do 1280 x 1024 in 2 megs of RAM? My 2meg Mach 64 can only do 1024 x 768 and my 4 meg one has to use dithering to do 1280 with any usable number of colors.

sliderider wrote:

You're able to do 1280 x 1024 in 2 megs of RAM? My 2meg Mach 64 can only do 1024 x 768 and my 4 meg one has to use dithering to get that resolution with any usable number of colors.

1280 x 1024 x 8 = 10485760 bits
10485760 / 8 = 1310720 Bytes
1310720 / 1024 = 1280 KBytes

That mode should be well within the range of any card with 2MB of framebuffer memory.

sliderider wrote:

You're able to do 1280 x 1024 in 2 megs of RAM? My 2meg Mach 64 can only do 1024 x 768 and my 4 meg one has to use dithering to do 1280 with any usable number of colors.

Any 2 MB card should be able to do 1280x1024 at 256 colors. Still no 24/32-bit depth at 1024x768 though.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/132328

Ok I see now. It says on the box you can only use 8-bit color with 2mb at 1280x1024, but who only uses 8-bit color? Even my old 68030 and 68040 Macs can do millions of colors.

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot! 😀 I hope that I can continue these "quick test" posts. If I can (make the effort to do them), there may be hundreds more of them...

I keep my fingers crossed! (:
Have you been considering writing one big summary thread containing links to all your tests? ^^

sliderider wrote:

Ok I see now. It says on the box you can only use 8-bit color with 2mb at 1280x1024, but who only uses 8-bit color? Even my old 68030 and 68040 Macs can do millions of colors.

Yeah, but not at those resolutions being talked about, unless you had some crazy expensive nubus graphics card. A 1280 x 1024 x 24bpp screen is 3840 KBytes. The ATI Rage chip in my much later Beige G3 only came with 2MB.

You can do 24bpp at 800 x 600 though with only 2MBytes of display memory.

udam_u wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot! 😀 I hope that I can continue these "quick test" posts. If I can (make the effort to do them), there may be hundreds more of them...

I keep my fingers crossed! (:
Have you been considering writing one big summary thread containing links to all your tests? ^^

I am really hoping to do lots of test threads on Vogons, and so a summary thread would probably be too big!

For this Orchid Kelvin-ISA graphics card in the original post, what does the number 64 stand for? Does it refer to the memory interface being 64-bit (data path from memory to chipset is 64 bits wide) or the data width for the Windows 2D GUI acceleration? Or both perhaps?!

Also, under the graphics chipset sticker is the GD-5434. For the 16-bit ISA bus, is it the best chipset you can have in terms of speed?

BTW, where were Orchid Technology based? Does anyone know?
Thanks a lot.

Unfortunately I don't have the results anymore, but from benchmarking on my 386 the Kelvin64 yielded the best results which is why it's still in there