What are the chances that the ad might actually generate more income than the card ever did 😀 - not my listing btw

https://www.ebay.com/itm/174748651347

Error 0x7CF wrote on 2022-04-28, 00:45:

If it weren't for the handful of articles that are clearly real, and the fact it's mentioned on an Internet-Archived page from S […]
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If it weren't for the handful of articles that are clearly real, and the fact it's mentioned on an Internet-Archived page from SMOS in 1996, I would almost think this card was a hoax.
The ad looks borderline fake and the font used on the silkscreen looks very much like the font KiCAD uses by default.

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:20:

They probably took a look at the competition, namely 3dfx, and decided to can the project.

Considering just how many crappy 3d accelerators were in the market both before and after the Voodoo it seems difficult to believe a company would develop a 3d chip and give it support for all these APIs and choose not to release it. I guess it has to be true though, the PIX disappears from S-MOS's website between the April 1997 archival and the May 1997 archival.
See under Standard Products, "PIX 3D Graphics Rendering Engine" vanishes between archives.
https://web.archive.org/web/19970412152710/ht … ww.smos.com:80/
https://web.archive.org/web/19970524161434/ht … ww.smos.com:80/
Unfortunately they didn't archive any of the potentially informative links from the PIX home page itself.
https://web.archive.org/web/19970412152848/ht … /pix/index.html
The PCX was an okay 3d accelerator but it wasn't all that common, if this were cheaper (no memory chip, probably cheaper?) it could have found a niche, even if it was just in OEM systems where the onboard 2d was some cirrus chip with no 3d.

If this thing disappeared that fast, there was almost certainly something very problematic . The ads were obviously targeting potential end-users and aiming to build mindshare, yet they were extremely vague and did not even feature screen shots . My guess is that either real-world performance did not even measure up to S3 Virge 325 levels OR that all that promised API support was mostly still vaporware at that point, possibly even both. Another possibility is that an unfixable (or hard/expensive to fix ) limitation, flaw or oversight was found at the last minute which resulted in the whole concept getting quietly canned .

We may never know for sure .

"Have you seen what PIX can do?" says the ad with no screenshots 😮)
Seeing the found board is for evaluation and there are no datasheets Im estimating approximately 0 chance for any software.

Some good news, Windows detects new hardware on boot as a “PCI Multimedia device”. I’ve also reached out to a couple folks I believe were involved with the project, no responses yet however.

https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies … hics-processors - a story on the company, it eventually got absorbed into Broadcom. Looks like it was a bit too early for an embedded GPU STB offering though, and when time did catch up Broadcom wound up buying a different company to make VideoCore.

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-04-25, 21:08:

So you guys might not believe this, not sure I do 🤣, I managed to find one of these. Now to test and try and track down any demos or drivers. It’s gonna be a long shot but I’m going to contact anyone I can track down involved.

Wow, that's incredible! I can't believe someone found one of these. Can you explain how you came into possession of this little fella?

I would be even more amazed if you actually found any drivers or software for it. It has been months now, so I'm assuming you were never able to find anything.

Since it seems to have not made it to retail, I'd say your best bet is to look over all of the press releases or news articles that people have dug up and pick out any other companies, products, operating systems or software packages that are mentioned and then see if you can find any old archived development software packages related to those things, or contact any websites that may be dedicated to those particular things.

Also, check out this thread. There are lots of links in the OP, and many many more in the comments through out the thread. There are lots of obscure files on those sites. 😀
Link Repository for Vintage PC Driver\Documentation Archives, FTPs, Websites

Kind of crazy that over the past year we've had 3GA, Pix 3D and Tasmania 3D cards show up after almost 30 years. Not to mention that infamouse V5 6K that sold on ebay, and the Quantum3D Ventana that's listed on there now. Makes me wonder what else is out there floating around. 😁

I setup a search term and it popped up on eBay one day. I’ve tried contacting a couple folks I think might have been involved with it but no response so far. I need to put out a few more feelers.