if i'm not mistaken, bit was a brand of beer in germany. hence the expression, bitte ein bit, please one 'bit' (beer)
so after 32 beers, if you're still able to do anything, thinking that you can actually do anything seems very plausible. 😁

edit : seems the brand was bittburger, shortened to bit.

OK, the 5402 is _really_ basic and will not accept more than 512 kB.
Though, that was already called "super VGA".
Does it run these games ok?
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-2000/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/wolfenstein-3d/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/x-com-ufo- … efense/techinfo
UFO: Wait until a terror mission, click to level 4 of the structure - does it still scroll fast enough?

1 MB was standard for later ISA cards, but will not make a difference for games. Pure Windows gimmick.

You'll be lucky if you can find something like this for that price:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Gainward-Co-Ltd-TSVGA … 0-/203800302276
More likely, it will be double that.
And still, it will not run Crysis.
Or DOOM, sorry.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:16:

if i'm not mistaken, bit was a brand of beer in germany. hence the expression, bitte ein bit, please one 'bit' (beer)
so after 32 beers, if you're still able to do anything, thinking that you can actually do anything seems very plausible. 😁

edit : seems the brand was bittburger, shortened to bit.

A Belgian who knows about beer, figure that. 😜

Yes, it's those 32 Bit, exactly! The silly ones are the best, can't help it.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

OK, the 5402 is _really_ basic and will not accept more than 512 kB.
Though, that was already called "super VGA".

Acumos AVGA2 supports 32x32 hardware cursor, 16 color 1024x768@70Hz (75MHz dotclock), 256 color 800x600@72Hz, 132x43 text mode, 128KB access window, cool stuff like turning off chaining in 13h to enable 4 linear 128KB pages in standard mode 13h, 8 byte at a time internal memory copy with 8bit color masking (sprites at >12MB/s) and Read/Write Mode 1 extended to 8-bit fields enabling accelerated line drawing and pattern fills at ~24-40MB/s.
Its also pretty fast "5.5 MB/s transfer speeds in the 430HX board when running at 11.1 MHz" http://www.os2museum.com/wp/fast-unaccelerated-vga/
I would call that a pretty solid early SuperVGA.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

Does it run these games ok? https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-2000/techinfo https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/wolfenst […]
Show full quote

Does it run these games ok?
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-2000/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/wolfenstein-3d/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/x-com-ufo- … efense/techinfo
UFO: Wait until a terror mission, click to level 4 of the structure - does it still scroll fast enough?

386SX 25MHz, sadly no VGA card will help with 640x480@256 1992 game with no hardware scrolling support coded in, or CPU starved UFO released in 1994 (played on DX 40MHz back in the day, and it was no picnic).
In theory SimCity 2000 (or Transport Tycoon) programmed to take advantage of VBE 2.0 linear framebuffer (disables chaining in 256 color modes) in combination with CRTC start address and Dirty Rectangles (updating only animated parts of the screen) could be made to scroll without copying full framebuffer on every screen refresh. Anyone looking for a coding challenge interested in tacking such a mod? 😀

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

1 MB was standard for later ISA cards, but will not make a difference for games. Pure Windows gimmick.

1MB ISA VGA was extremely rare up to 1992, and only became standard in VLB and simple 2D PCI cards.
Sadly VBE/AF was 6 years too late and dead in the water after Win95 DirectDraw. Imagine VBE/AF coming out in 1990 with the first SVGAs providing at least partial blitter acceleration in DOS. Even Cirrus Logic CL-GD5402 mentioned here would comfortably accelerate sprite drawing despite being early budget solution.

So, don’t l need to change my Cirrus Logic 5402.
There would be no improvement. 🥺

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:37:

Acumos AVGA2 supports 32x32 hardware cursor, 16 color 1024x768@70Hz (75MHz dotclock), 256 color 800x600@72Hz, 132x43 text mode, […]
Show full quote

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

OK, the 5402 is _really_ basic and will not accept more than 512 kB.
Though, that was already called "super VGA".

Acumos AVGA2 supports 32x32 hardware cursor, 16 color 1024x768@70Hz (75MHz dotclock), 256 color 800x600@72Hz, 132x43 text mode, 128KB access window, cool stuff like turning off chaining in 13h to enable 4 linear 128KB pages in standard mode 13h, 8 byte at a time internal memory copy with 8bit color masking (sprites at >12MB/s) and Read/Write Mode 0 extended to 8-bit fields enabling accelerated line drawing and pattern fills at ~24-40MB/s.
Its also pretty fast "5.5 MB/s transfer speeds in the 430HX board when running at 11.1 MHz" http://www.os2museum.com/wp/fast-unaccelerated-vga/
I would call that a pretty solid early SuperVGA.

Is that a relabeled CL 5402 or am I missing something? Is the 5402 as good?
OK, the page you linked to notes the Miro CL 5401 as nearly matching the top cards in benchmarks, that should count for the 5402 as well, I guess.
Anyway, I really don't know how bad the SX25's bottleneck is:

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:37:

386SX 25MHz, sadly no VGA card will help with 640x480@256 1992 game with no hardware scrolling support coded in, or CPU starved UFO released in 1994 (played on DX 40MHz back in the day, and it was no picnic).

Never played SimCity 2000, just didn't quite catch me back then. Was going by the mobygames specs, for what it's worth.
Yet, UFO, I played that to death on a DX40 (Oktek Jaguar V, not exactly a rocket) - with the slowest OTIVGA known to man. It still ran fine, so that would be my benchmark.
(TFTD and Tie-Fighter really killed that machine.)
But well, if a SX25 just will not do that, OP is SOL.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:37:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

1 MB was standard for later ISA cards, but will not make a difference for games. Pure Windows gimmick.

1MB ISA VGA was extremely rare up to 1992, and only became standard in VLB and simple 2D PCI cards.
Sadly VBE/AF was 6 years too late and dead in the water after Win95 DirectDraw. Imagine VBE/AF coming out in 1990 with the first SVGAs providing at least partial blitter acceleration in DOS. Even Cirrus Logic CL-GD5402 mentioned here would comfortably accelerate sprite drawing despite being early budget solution.

OK, the aforementioned OTI came with 256k and the option for additional 256k... in 1993.
More precisely, it was standard that the chip would support that raw amount of memory and many PCB had the sockets or the spots for it - you'd still have to pay through your teeth to get another whopping 768 or 512 kB of DRAM! 😜

@OP: In the light of that information, I'd stick with the CL. It's fitting the system. A budget 386 just isn't meant to be graphics savvy. All the more reason to build a nice 486 or S7 as next step 😉

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-30, 10:55:

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:37:

Acumos AVGA2 supports 32x32 hardware cursor.....

Is that a relabeled CL 5402 or am I missing something? Is the 5402 as good?

"In April 1992, Acumos merged with Cirrus Logic". AVGA1 was relabeled to 5401, AVGA2 to 5402.

>SX25, 5402

According to same link http://www.os2museum.com/wp/fast-unaccelerate … #comment-351477 its still doing 3.2MB/s write speed in Commodore 386SX-25 😀

GEOCE if you know how to solder and measure stuff you might check how your card is configured, there is a chance its not set to max clock and could be speed up a little. There are potentially 3 resistors responsible for setting standard/fast timings and internal clock between 37-50MHz.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 19:21:

The point about a 386sx is to run on a 16 bit only board.
Just sayin' 😉

The point of VLB is to be a "local bus", hence the 'LB' in VLB. The fact is that VLB can support either 16-bit or 32-bit hardware interface, and there are 386SX type systems with VLB slots, as absurd as that may seem.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:21:

OK, the 5402 is _really_ basic and will not accept more than 512 kB. Though, that was already called "super VGA". Does it run th […]
Show full quote

OK, the 5402 is _really_ basic and will not accept more than 512 kB.
Though, that was already called "super VGA".
Does it run these games ok?
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-2000/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/wolfenstein-3d/techinfo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/x-com-ufo- … efense/techinfo
UFO: Wait until a terror mission, click to level 4 of the structure - does it still scroll fast enough?

Many early VGA cards were SVGA in reality.
The cards from the late 1980s shipped with 256k usually, but allowed for installing 512k.
Unfortunately, only the higher emd cards had a provision for memory expansion (free sockets or mounting holes).

The other, lowr end cards required installing chips on top of the existing chips and cutting two wires,
which were then wired in series with the extra chips.
That technique became known as piggyback, I think.

Anyway, with 256k, the "full" plain VGA memory, these Super VGA modes are possible:

- 800x600 in 16 (original, defact Super VGA resolution)
- 640x400 in 256c (no typo)

With 512KB,if memory serves :
640x480 in 256c
800x600 in 256c
1024x768 in 16c

Edit: UniVBE usually supports those old cards by installing a VBE 2.x compatible VESA BIOS.
However, I had trouble making UniVBE work often.
Alternatively, it's possible to use the old, original VBE TSRs from the chip makers.
They often work flawlessly, but are limited to VBE 1.x.

Long story short, VBE 1.x is fine for Real-Mode applications.
VBE 1.x provides a 16-Bit Real-Mode compatible interface for BIOS.
VBE 2.x added 32-Bit Protected-Mode support and support for a linear frame buffer.
For ISA VGA, that's usually at the end of ISA space 15-16MB; for VLB/PCI it's somewhere between 3-4GB.

Edit: Programs like CheckIt can't detect more than 256/512KB of VGA memory easily (the 512KB was just added because in 1988/89 some
VGA/SVGA clone cards already had a provision for 512KB total) .
(For a real check, they'd have to write/read actual data to/from the VGA.)
That's because plain VGA, essentially, has a register than merely can be used to report "full VGA RAM available" yes/no.
More precisely, I believe, such programs just check for the extended memory bit.
If enabled, it's more than 64KB of Video RAM (256KB was considered full capacity).
Also, the VGA "window" can be up to 128KB wide.
Knowing one or both information, the program then makes an appropriate guess, I guess.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140/projects … /vga/vgamem.htm

- In the early days, IBM VGA also could have had shipped with merely 64KB installed.
Akin to IBM EGA, which was crippled sometimes with having 64KB only.
Gratefully, for VGA this didn't become standard.

Edit: Quick edit.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-04-29, 17:21:

While you could get Win95A itself running pretty nicely on a 386 with 16MB, there would be not a lot of "Win95" specific stuff that wouldn't bog it down to a crawl. So mostly a Win95 386 would just be for running older and newer Win 3.11 stuff that works on 95. There's maybe a 2 year overlap of "Games that don't need so much CPU that they're okay on 386 but also run in Win95 DOS prompt" but that is only a portion of games in that period. So again, rather limiting in that respect. More should run with a boot to full 95 DOS mode though, but nothing that a 386 likes should NEED 95 DOS, so it's just an obstacle to earlier game compatibility that is not necessary.

This is accurate. I still find it neat to push hardware with OS beyond what it is generally assumed to "fit"

Jo22 wrote on 2022-05-01, 03:18:

VBE 2.x added 32-Bit Protected-Mode support and support for a linear frame buffer.
For ISA VGA, that's usually at the end of ISA space 15-16MB; for VLB/PCI it's somewhere between 3-4GB.

I can't really comment on PCI, but in my experience with VLB cards the LFB is never in the 3-4GB range. More like 64MB.
I have some 486 boards with more than 64MB installed, and I have attempted to move the LFB to a higher location so not to conflict with physical memory. At least using scitech display doctor, I think the best I managed was 128MB and not every VLB card could do it. There seemed to be limitations based on the graphics chip and/or the card design.

There was mode_info struct (VESA API) that gets filled with details upon buffer initialization.
One of the fields is the physical address.

Point being is that LFB's mem address can be easily obtained from there.

Win 95 on a 386DX @ 40Mhz and the FPU installed is not a bad last o.s. option but it will need a video card with GUI acceleration, a fast disk drive, as much ram as possible and at the end it will still be quite a slow (but still impressive considering the system speed) experience anyway after a while. At the end Win 3.11 imho with the same hw is a much more balanced experience and very fast with a late generation ISA video card.