I found another identical card that was sold in 2018 on ebay, unfortunately not many info was given since ebay doesn't keep records for more than 60 days.
This is a link for reference (not ebay):
https://picclick.co.uk/16bit-ISA-EGA-VGA-Grap … 2426289296.html

Also found that VTCL = Vtech...

update: apparently there are people asking the same question from 2011... at least from what I've found on cpu-world forum and a couple of italian forums... good luck!

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-03-12, 13:53:

Last week I made an offer on this unknown, untested graphics card. I can't really find anything on the net about it. […]
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Last week I made an offer on this unknown, untested graphics card. I can't really find anything on the net about it.

Some specs:
- main chip: VTCL 27-0842-00
(What brand is this?)
- 2x AMI VGA BIOS, one high, one low
- 1x EPROM labeled L286-2 CIJB
- 8x ram chip: Sharp LH2464-12
- Both EGA And VGA connectors
- 8 dip switches (unknown functions)

I haven't tested it yet, but will do so soon, possibly this weekend. I guess I'll have to tinker with the dip switches a bit 😀
I don't expect too much of it. Something in the league of my Trident 8900B or C&T82C451. It just caught my attention because there don't seem too much information on it.

Do you recognize this card? Can you identify it? Would it perform above slide show level?

This card does not have an integrated clock synthesizer chip, but discrete crystals. It has the two standard VGA crystals ~25MHz and ~28MHz, as well as the standard EGA/MDA crystal of 16.257MHz, and it might take the CGA dot clock (14.318 MHz) from the ISA bus. There are obviously no super-EGA/super-VGA clocks present on this card. This looks like an early 16-bit multi-standard VGA card. Cards like this were common around 1990. The usual specs are: NMI-assisted hardware compatibility with MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA, but you need proprietary BIOS calls to enable the backwards compatibility modes. The switches can be used to choose the monitor type and possibly the initial compatibility mode. Some of the cards allow configurations like "VGA monitor connected, boot up in CGA backwards compatibility mode".

As this card has a 16-bit bus interface and 16-bit BIOS, it is likely faster than the original 8-bit IBM VGA card. Your guess that this card might be comparable to the TVGA8900B is quite good, I would expect the same performance level. It depends on the game whether this performance (up to 1.5MB/s) is slide-show level or better.

The chip with the L286 label is not an EPROM, that chip is the RAMDAC. The label is the type and serial number of the card, not the contents of that chip. The RAMDAC is just a convenient place to put that label. If you are lucky, the BIOS contents help you identify which utilities you need to switch modes. Otherwise, this stuff can usually determined by reverse engineering the BIOS, given enough time and skill.

As mkarcher says, it's probably an early CGA/EGA/VGA card with (some amount of) hardware emulation for CGA/EGA.

The only unusual chip on the card (aside from the custom VTCL chip) is an LM339 quad differential comparator, which is probably used to convert the analogue RAMDAC output into the digital TTL output for the CGA/EGA monitor.

If you can dump the VBIOS, there should be some text that will further identify the card. There's also a chance that the VBIOS contains the software needed to handle the CGA/EGA compatibility modes. (I've seen this before with some EGA cards.)

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-03-12, 13:53:

Last week I made an offer on this unknown, untested graphics card. I can't really find anything on the net about it.Do you recognize this card? Can you identify it? Would it perform above slide show level?

Is there an FCC ID sticker on the back side? That usually gives away name of the PCB manufacturer.

Thanks for all the information 😁

Unfortunately there's no info on the back, no FCC stuff (I looked for it) or anything useful.

I do have two eeprom devices so I could try to read them out (still gotta figure out how they work)
(And try the card ofc, to see if there's any not screen info)

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-03-13, 22:20:

...Unfortunately there's no info on the back, no FCC stuff (I looked for it) or anything useful...

Considering how much radio emissions / interference video cards could cause (think TEMPEST) and how much the american FCC authority and its hefty fines are feared by HW vendors, maybe this FCC sticker-less EGA-VGA card was made for JDM? (Japanese Domestic Market, with its not so fully IBM-compatible NEC PC systems, etc.)

(or somebody may have peeled the sticker off in its 34 year lifetime?)

Any way: haven't got this thing tested yet. But I will some time later 😃

Little progress:
I stuck the card into my IBM model 30 8086 and it gave image right away. It was connected to a standard modern HP flat screen with a VGA cable.
SW1 to SW8 all set to off (up if you like).

At boot there was a BIOS screen indeed. It told me:

CGA-BIOS (C) 1989 AMERICAN MEGATENDS Inc.
Version no. - 1.7 All rights reserved.

Can't do anything with that info...

I'll just find some way to use me EPROM devices to dump the BIOS files.
Or is there another tool I'm not aware of, that makes creating a VGA BIOS dump easy? (I know there is one for the regular system BIOS but that won't do anything I guess)

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-03-15, 19:02:

Or is there another tool I'm not aware of, that makes creating a VGA BIOS dump easy? (I know there is one for the regular system BIOS but that won't do anything I guess)

The usual way to dump a VGA BIOS is using debug:

C:\>debug
-rcx
CX 0000
:8000
-nVGABIOS.BIN
-wC000:0
Writing 08000 bytes (32768 decimal)
-q
C:\>

Thanks! 😁 I'm gonna try that one 😀

If I understand this the C000:0 points tot the address, do in fact any BIOS in the upper range can be read out?

In terms of performance, well... it's a dud.
Just as expected. It's about as fast as the infamous Oak OTI037. Nevertheless I think it's pretty ok given its age 😀
In my 286 system it got to about 2/3 of the ET4000ax, the difference may get bigger with faster systems I think.

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-03-16, 23:25:

If I understand this the C000:0 points tot the address, do in fact any BIOS in the upper range can be read out?

Generally yes. But some boards do not allow DMA access to the mainbaord BIOS from the ISA bus. This may prevent writing the system ROM to floppy (using ISA DMA channel 2), to an XT hard drive (using ISA DMA channel 3) or to hard drives connected to an AHA154x SCSI controller (using ISA busmaster DMA). In that case, you can copy the ROM contents to some unused RAM area using the "M" command and then write the RAM copy. You do not have the problems when you write to an AT IDE hard disk.