Help with Trident 9000B 16-bit mode

[BSA Starfire]

Hi folks,

I have a Trident 9000B 512K graphics card in my 386 SX 33 system, but I can't seem to get it to work in 16-bit mode.
Here's a picture of my card and motherboard etc.

It seems to be match this card on statson.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/U-Z/UNIDENTIFIED-XVGA-TRIDENT-9000.html
And is also very similar to this one.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/U-Z/UNIDENTIFIED-XVGA-TVGA-9000.html
Currently the jumpers are set like this jp7:closed jp8: closed jp9 a/b/c open. now this should give 16-bit bus operation as far as I can see. but take at look at the Dr Hardware result.

My Trident 8900B card gives these results when correctly jumpered to 16-bit bus operation.

Any ideas? I've tried the auto detect jumper(jp8) both enabled and disabled and it makes no difference. It's clearly running as an 8-bit bus card, here's the results from my Realtek RTG3105iEH, a card that is known to only run at an 8-bit bus speed for comparison.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-ca ... -9000.html

And yes, I know Trident is a slow card and there are many better choices, but this is a nostalgia build of my first PC & that had a 512K trident. It's just bugging me that I can't get it set properly.

Best regards,
Chris

[derSammler]

I have that card too in one of my 286 PCs. The thing is, the jumper only changes the BIOS segment used. The 8-bit segment works in a PC/XT, the 16-bit segment only on 286 and up. The speed of the card won't change much, as the chip simply isn't faster.

ps: you can see that the card is indeed in 16-bit mode in the first two lines of the test ("Direct Access Text Mode").

[BSA Starfire]

Ah, OK so it just changes how the BIOS code is addressed then for 8088/8086 compatibility?
I just came across this, exact same cards as mine and exactly the same results too.

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/about-those-trident-vgas/

I think I'll switch the 9000B for the 8900B then. Or maybe go with the Oak as it is a little faster still and does have a nice image quality.

[vlask]

Trident 9000 line were most lowend chips, so Trident didn't cared about performance. 8900 line was main highend line of company. Thats why 8900 is faster, despite its older.....

[BSA Starfire]

Thanks vlask, its hard to find any definitive data on these cards now. My assumption was the 9000 should be quicker than the 8900 and it was just a settings issue. Does anyone have a table of performance data for the ISA Trident chip revisions? There are quite a few letter variants out there.

[Jo22]

The TVGA 8900D is quite okay, I believe.
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=57082

[elianda]

I had a 9000 and 8900 in my VGA roundup: http://retronn.de/ftp/docs/eliandas_isa_vga_roundup.pdf

[dieymir]

I have a Trident 9000B on a 386sx (@40Mhz) too. The Trident 9000 is the low component (cost) version of the 8900C. You only have to add 3 more chips to have a complete (S)VGA card: BIOS, memory and RAMDAC. The 9000i integrated also a RAMDAC so you need only 2 more chips. 8900CL and 8900D had FIFOs that improve performance like the Tseng Labs ET4000, this is not the case of the 8900B/C and all of the 9000s.

There is a Trident utility named TELLSET.EXE that shows the bus with of Memory, Video RAM and Video RAM WS. I received the card jumpered for 8 bit wide and, like you, I set the jumper for 16bit wide operation. Now TELLSET shows BIOS and Video RAM in 16 bit mode but WS went up from 1 to 2 and I didn't notice significant - if any - performance improvements.

[vlask]

Thanks vlask, its hard to find any definitive data on these cards now. My assumption was the 9000 should be quicker than the 8900 and it was just a settings issue. Does anyone have a table of performance data for the ISA Trident chip revisions? There are quite a few letter variants out there.

On my site....looks like only good version of Trident is 8900CL-C. All 9000x cards looks same poor performance....

http://vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/bench/quake320.png

http://vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/bench/diaggraphic.png