It's just an old capacitor that failed spectacularly. It's common with this type of capacitors, it can be easily replaced and had nothing to do with the card being inserted in an 8-bit slot.

That said, the 8900C is indeed supposed to work in an 8-bit slot.
There are quite a few others too, mostly chips from Trident, Paradise, Cirrus Logic, OAK and some more.

You can list your cards here of course. Note that even though a specific VGA card with chip x works, another implementation on a different card might not.

So you reckon it was just bad luck with that one card? I can try another one , just worried it might blow up as well!

Omarkoman wrote on 2025-05-12, 08:50:

So you reckon it was just bad luck with that one card? I can try another one , just worried it might blow up as well!

Luck has nothing to do with it. It's a property of the old degraded tantalum capacitors. With age they get shorted internally, and then they blow up when you power the device.
You just replace that single capacitor, or at least just cut it off if you can't replace it. The card itself is ok.
Another card of the similar vintage has exactly the same chances of blowing up, and it has nothing to do with slot width or position.

ok thanks, I'll test the card in another system.

here is a link with photos of few of the other cards I have :

https://postimg.cc/gallery/FkcMrXr

any suggestion which one should I try next?

thanks

OTI037C, Trident 8900C & 8900CL & 8800CS are chips confirmed working (maybe more, these are what I personally remember). Whether the specific implementation will work and what jumper settings are required, you'll have to try and find out.

Why does it have to be 8-bit slot? It will greatly limit the performance of the card, and this is already a not so fast 286. 8900C is the best card for 286 I think, and not difficult to get. 8800 is slow but might be used if you prefer to keep other cards for better/faster systems. Note that 9000 series and 8900CL are not the same thing as C but closely related, support for 8-bit slot might be down to how the card was made and it's ROM (and possibly jumper settings).

The motherboard doesnt have any 16bit slots.

Actually, it might be an XT board? Not a 286?

https://postimg.cc/gallery/CkGPLsk

Was about to suggest it's an XT but you beat me to it. I spy 8088 CPU and 8255 chip that's XT specific. So for system that slow the 8800 might be a better fit, if only because it makes little sense to put such card in any other system. But then again it can emulate Hercules I think? So it would be at least interesting card to have on hand.

Trident 8900C should work just fine in XT system but note some of these cards have 2 ROM chips. These cards are optimized for the 16-bit bus of the 286, before fast RAM shadowing was a thing. So it's a waste to put them in XT 8-bit slot and these might not even work properly at all. You want a card with a single ROM chip.

Just found this card in my stash;

https://i.postimg.cc/8TTNXCRk/IMG-2197.jpg

Will need to google for jumper settings. If anyone can help, that would be much appreciated!

Looks like similar card in this thread:

Cirrus Logic Eagle II 8-bit VGA card

And dip switch config is likely same and already configures for full vga. Will give is a try!

This is another nice card that's kinda slow but can emulate Hercules and MDA, so it's great for a machine like this. Here's some jumper settings for a similar model: https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturer … gic/clgd510.php

Thank you!

Thank you!

You might have to change the dipswitch settings on your motherboard for it to work with a vga card instead of the default Hercules/monochrome (whatever is installed, hard to tell with the pictures).

I used this list when getting a vga cards for my XTs.

https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/5150/vga/5150_vga.htm

I went with AST VGA Plus.

lolo799 wrote on 2025-05-12, 12:20:

You might have to change the dipswitch settings on your motherboard for it to work with a vga card instead of the default Hercules/monochrome (whatever is installed, hard to tell with the pictures).

Good point, now I need to figure out what motherboard this is. Any ideas anyone?

Btw i tried 4 cards including the 8bit one, no image output on the screen. So probably need to change those dip switches for vga?

Looks like this is the motherboard:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/octek- … mhz-turbo-board

Omarkoman wrote on 2025-05-12, 20:47:

Btw i tried 4 cards including the 8bit one, no image output on the screen. So probably need to change those dip switches for vga?

Always, with ega/vga. They have a video controller bios, which is what this switch actually does: disable the video bios for MDA and CGA baked into legacy bios code.