Which Mem chips to get for Trident 8900C ISA video card ? \ VOGONS

Which Mem chips to get for Trident 8900C ISA video card ?

Topic actions

First post, by Omarkoman

Posted on 2024-08-31, 21:38

Omarkoman Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 278
Joined: 2020-03-30, 20:35
Location: Sydney, Australia

I bought couple Trident 8900C ISA video cards to play with for my 286 and 286 builds. The ET4000 is just crazy expensive and watching a benchmark videot on YT the 8900C is very close in terms of DOS games performance (not that I will play any games like Doom on 286 or 386 anyways, but still ).

Card 1 link to picture:

https://i.postimg.cc/dtKhpGrx/s-l1600.webp

has all 8 slots populated with SK Hynix hy51c4256s-10. So that should mean 8 x 128kb = 1MB of RAM.

The 2nd card :

https://i.postimg.cc/HW3G1gy1/s-l1600-1.webp
https://i.postimg.cc/6qMFrrXp/s-l1600-2.webp

comes with only 4 out of the 8 slots populated and has different memory chips on it. The chips are goldstar GM71C4256A-80.

So I want to upgrade the 2nd card to 1MB as well but need help to figure out which chips to get. Can I mix and match different spec chips , probably not?

Will these work if I get 8 of them ?

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/385703716268

Alternatively if you have any other recommendation on which ones to get and where to get them, can you please provide suggestion and a link ? Thanks in advance.

Reply 1 of 7, by mkarcher

Posted on 2024-08-31, 22:12

mkarcher Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 3627
Joined: 2019-01-19, 16:29
Location: Germany

You can mix and match alll kinds of 256k x 4 DRAMs in DIP20 case. They are always FPM. Just take care of the speed. -10 is 100ns, -80 is 80ns. A card with 80ns RAM might require 80ns or faster RAM to operate flawlessly. You can test whether your 2nd card works with -10 chips if you just transplant 4 chips from the first card to the second one. Be careful with the orientation of the chips. Plug them in the wrong way, and the chips will break.

Reply 2 of 7, by jakethompson1

Posted on 2024-08-31, 22:23

jakethompson1 Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2037
Joined: 2015-11-17, 04:16

Are there 286 games that actually benefit from more than 512K of video RAM?

Reply 3 of 7, by Omarkoman

Posted on 2024-08-31, 23:29

Omarkoman Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 278
Joined: 2020-03-30, 20:35
Location: Sydney, Australia

mkarcher wrote on 2024-08-31, 22:12:

You can mix and match alll kinds of 256k x 4 DRAMs in DIP20 case. They are always FPM. Just take care of the speed. -10 is 100ns, -80 is 80ns. A card with 80ns RAM might require 80ns or faster RAM to operate flawlessly. You can test whether your 2nd card works with -10 chips if you just transplant 4 chips from the first card to the second one. Be careful with the orientation of the chips. Plug them in the wrong way, and the chips will break.

awesome thank you and good tip on swapping the chips to see if it works !

Reply 4 of 7, by Omarkoman

Posted on 2024-08-31, 23:30

Omarkoman Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 278
Joined: 2020-03-30, 20:35
Location: Sydney, Australia

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-08-31, 22:23:

Are there 286 games that actually benefit from more than 512K of video RAM?

probably not but if its possible , why not ! I am putting 16 MB of RAM in the 286 which would have been unheard of at the time! mine had 1MB and I added extgra 1MB and that was mind blowing back in the day!

Reply 5 of 7, by Grzyb

Posted on 2024-08-31, 23:52

Grzyb Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2674
Joined: 2019-05-08, 13:47
Location: CET-1CEST-2

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-08-31, 22:23:

Are there 286 games that actually benefit from more than 512K of video RAM?

Scorched Earth can use 1024 x 768 x 256, but it may be slow on a 286...

Nie rzucim ziemi, skąd nasz root!

Reply 6 of 7, by konc

Posted on 2024-09-01, 08:40

konc Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2535
Joined: 2013-01-14, 15:09
Location: Greece

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-08-31, 22:23:

Are there 286 games that actually benefit from more than 512K of video RAM?

Not really, but maxing the VRAM can make the card faster! I don't know about the OP's card specifically, probably just a handful do so. It might be a nice little experiment to benchmark before and after the VRAM increase and identify some cards that do benefit from it.

Check out the discussion in this old thread of mine where I had this happen to me and I couldn't understand why: VGA VRAM size and performance discussion

Reply 7 of 7, by mkarcher

Posted on 2024-09-01, 13:08

mkarcher Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 3627
Joined: 2019-01-19, 16:29
Location: Germany

konc wrote on 2024-09-01, 08:40:

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-08-31, 22:23:

Are there 286 games that actually benefit from more than 512K of video RAM?

Not really, but maxing the VRAM can make the card faster!

At leat for the 8900CL and 8900D, more VRAM will make it faster. Those cards can access the memory 32 bit at a time, but only if there are enough memory chips to fill 32 bit (which is 8 chips of 4 bits each). IIRC, most Trident BIOSes print the RAM width during POST.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware