Don't know anything about that card specifically, but it certainly does look very interesting! Some guesses/thoughts:

- External RAMDAC feature doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing - I have an old 3DLabs card that has an external IBM DAC and the output looks fine for GUI in Windows 95 or Puppy Linux. So at least in theory it *can* work well, but I don't know if it's an "always" thing or if there are stand-alone DACs that produce horrible quality.

- I'm thinking that BNC connector may be some sort of house sync connector instead of CVBS. This is just a wild guess though.

Little bit of web searching about the card and I found this huge PDF about it, not sure how useful it may be though:
http://pdf.datasheetarchive.com/indexerfiles/ … ns-00116244.pdf

ET4000 excel in ISA and sort of VLB
But for PCI systems there are far better cards
Unique? yes. Useful? not so much

I think this card have two sections. Because its called ET4000 / w32P Its actually a windows GUI accelerator.. The et4000 part is good for dos uses, the w32P is as acellerator for windows gui.

Robin4 wrote:

I think this card have two sections. Because its called ET4000 / w32P Its actually a windows GUI accelerator.. The et4000 part is good for dos uses, the w32P is as acellerator for windows gui.

So would that make it potentially better for a Win95/DOS hybrid? (I'm thinking paired up with a Voodoo 1 for good measure)

@ obobskivich - A lot of information in that PDF manual...thank you!

It mentions something interesting in the introduction section - "Secondary CRT controller can be used to display picture-in-picture graphics or even full motion video..."...very cool...I love the Pic-in-Pic feature on my old Sony CRT TV's (something I wish most modern TV's still had). The rest of the standard features sound pretty good to me, but I guess I won't know until I actually try it out. Time for retrocomputing has been of the essence for me lately, but I hope to get to trying it out soon.

smeezekitty wrote:

ET4000 excel in ISA and sort of VLB
But for PCI systems there are far better cards
Unique? yes. Useful? not so much

That's what I was afraid of...I think it may be a good card for my dedicated Win3.11 build that I am planning though (socket 7)...only if Win3.1 drivers exist for this thing.

Robin4 wrote:

I think this card have two sections. Because its called ET4000 / w32P Its actually a windows GUI accelerator.. The et4000 part is good for dos uses, the w32P is as acellerator for windows gui.

Yes this is kind of true but of course, this version is "limited" in DOS due to the PCI interface. As Wikipedia mentions, "W32p offered solid Windows GUI acceleration at a reasonable price, along with considerably competent DOS VGA performance. Tseng carried this DOS performance along with them with their later ET6000 accelerator."...and earlier for the ISA version it confirms that "the original ET4000 was notable for its outstanding host-interface (ISA) throughput." as many of us know.

obobskivich wrote:

Robin4 wrote:

I think this card have two sections. Because its called ET4000 / w32P Its actually a windows GUI accelerator.. The et4000 part is good for dos uses, the w32P is as acellerator for windows gui.

So would that make it potentially better for a Win95/DOS hybrid? (I'm thinking paired up with a Voodoo 1 for good measure)

Yes, that might be a good option for me...but since there are probably better options for Win95, I was maybe hoping for a Win3.11/DOS combo system instead? But again, I am not sure.

retrofanatic wrote:

@ obobskivich - A lot of information in that PDF manual...thank you!

It mentions something interesting in the introduction section - "Secondary CRT controller can be used to display picture-in-picture graphics or even full motion video..."...very cool...I love the Pic-in-Pic feature on my old Sony CRT TV's (something I wish most modern TV's still had). .

PiP - I miss those days. And remember those Sonys with multiple tuners that could do that 4 or 6-up channel surf mode? 😊

retrofanatic wrote:

Yes, that might be a good option for me...but since there are probably better options for Win95, I was maybe hoping for a Win3.11/DOS combo system instead? But again, I am not sure.

Honestly I'd say do whatever makes sense for what you want - I've used Win95 on 1-2MB Cirrus and Trident cards before, and it is functional, but it isn't "top of the mark" for 95 by any means. But if that's all your application load needs, it can work. If 3.11 is better for supporting what you need, then go with 3.11. 😀