Hello everyone,

I recently had some experience with DEC PowerStorm 3D30 (2MB; early 1996) based on DEC's own TGA2 design. This card was used with their Alpha-based workstations and (in this version) it was limited to 256-color modes. I tested the card in my benchmark and discovered that it is a true OpenGL 1.0.1 3D accelerator (with extensions only for vertex arrays) and the acceleration works under Windows NT 3.5/4.0 (full ICD driver).

However, 256-color modes work with palettes and that means additional work for developers. This was well explained in this article from Microsoft (1994):
http://web.agelid.com/protect/utile/documenta … RGBA%20Mode.htm
-> You need to change the palette appropriately or modify the renderer to use only indexed colors (then you lose ability to do smooth shading and some other stuff)

Most OpenGL programs don't care and expect non-palette modes (12, 15, 16, 24 or 32 bits per pixel). They either check the configuration and fire an error (old programs where developers offer their own software rendering for 8-bit colors - like 3D Studio Max R2.5/R3) or just use wrong colors (basically anything 1998+). I was successful with LightWave 3D 5.6, which hides options for OpenGL smooth shading (if run with 8bpp) and offers only OpenGL modes without lighting (so you can still benefit from higher performance of the 3D accelerator).

So the questions are:
Do you know more OpenGL programs that support 256-color modes?
Do you know other 3D accelerator that supports OpenGL acceleration in 256-colors? (most cards switch to Microsoft OpenGL software renderer when set in 8bpp)

Cards:
DEC PowerStorm 3D30 (TGA2)
DEC PowerStorm 4D20 (TGA2)

Programs:
LightWave 3D 5.6

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Btw if you want to know more about this TGA2 graphics chip, I wrote all I know in this blog post:
https://swarmik.tumblr.com/post/6123093630419 … tga2-march-1996