It's not fast. Apparently it is faster than the IBM PGC it is a clone of though. This is running on a 10 MHz 286.
Very nice, thanks you!
I also own this card
PGA - Matrox PG-640A
But I think I didnt find that demo on the driver disks. Where is it from?
Predator99 wrote on Yesterday, 11:37:Very nice, thanks you! […]
Very nice, thanks you!
I also own this card
PGA - Matrox PG-640ABut I think I didnt find that demo on the driver disks. Where is it from?
What driver disks do you have? Are we allowed to link to driver software? The demo's in pg640_drivers.zip which is actually just demos and utilities. I haven't tried everything in there yet, that is "demo.bat".
There are a lot of drivers etc. for the next generation of these boards (PG-641, 1281) but they are not compatible. Those are more just regular TIGA boards + 3D. I'd love to find documentation for how to program them.
The 640 and 1280 are IBM PGC clones and we do have full documentation for them.
Actually we do have more programming information than I thought. Possibly for this whole era of Matrox cards. I'll update after I have a chance to look it over.
thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Yesterday, 10:25:It's not fast. Apparently it is faster than the IBM PGC it is a clone of though. This is running on a 10 MHz 286.
Wow, that is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to record and upload a video of that.
I just browsed the manual, and it's very cool to see so much about the card's basic 3D acceleration in there. I know not many people would be able to appreciate it in real-time on real hardware, but it would be interesting if someone put together a very simple 3D game that is actually accelerated by such an old card. I wonder how it works with an original 8088 at 4.77Mhz...
I dont have any driver disk. Think I downloaded everything from vcfed.
It was a little disappointing there is not much software for the PGC available. Maybe we should create a collection of everything...at least there is a program to display pictures.
Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 20:42:thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Yesterday, 10:25:It's not fast. Apparently it is faster than the IBM PGC it is a clone of though. This is running on a 10 MHz 286.
Wow, that is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to record and upload a video of that.
I just browsed the manual, and it's very cool to see so much about the card's basic 3D acceleration in there. I know not many people would be able to appreciate it in real-time on real hardware, but it would be interesting if someone put together a very simple 3D game that is actually accelerated by such an old card. I wonder how it works with an original 8088 at 4.77Mhz...
That is my exact plan and I welcome any advice and help.
I started my project https://github.com/trguhq/testglobe/ with this general idea in mind, before I had much of an idea of the performance of the very oldest 3D hardware. testglobe might run in a very rudimentary form on a PGC but it would be very basic, maybe something like the Amiga demo with the spinning globe in my avatar. As of now, the oldest hardware I've run testglobe on is a Sun Ultra 60 (where it runs at pretty much full speed compared to my modern Mac). Other people have run it on older SGIs. That project itself was actually to see the viability of using some older 3D hardware without texture mapping to run quake with just shaded triangles, but that's a topic for another day/thread. It evolved into an "what's the oldest 3D hardware that can spin some form of a globe?"
One thing I want to try is to just use old hardware to do the polygon fills or line drawing, and use an FPU (if available) to do the 3D transforms. So here even a 2D card might be able to usefully accelerate testglobe... or a game. For that I'm thinking a 386 with a coprocessor and a TIGA board. That'd also be through Windows or Mac OS drivers for simplicity, so it could potentially run on a lot of hardware.
For a game I'm thinking a battle mech game which at its most basic would be like Battlezone, but ideally would use filled polygons instead of just lines. I think a PGC is too slow for that. PG-640A might be too slow. A PG-641 though, may be able to make a nice game. That an XT with a PGC could run a 3D game is pretty optimistic, but we'll see. I intend to find out what the hardware can do.
A PG-640A is compatible with a PGC, but I'm not yet certain how compatible a PG-641 is. I'm looking into that now. I love the idea of a single "PGC" version using IBM's interface for apples to apples comparison between cards but it may be more like a PGC version, a Matrox version, and an accelerated-2D version that uses the FPU for 3D.
Couple additional things...
The PG-640 and such (there are many variations) were used in industrial equipment, some of which has survived in service to this day. So parts recyclers may try to get a high price for them as they are needed for valuable equipment to operate. They were widely used cards though so there will be other sources now and then. I also imagine once electronics are pushing 40 years old they tend to be retired so maybe we will see more from that source.
For a reality check, this is what an Amiga from 1985 can do with a 68000, 2D acceleration, and no FPU (albeit more slowly than this yet still usably - this is with a very fast processor):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xowft94FILo
I've had some discussions about whether an old FPU can even beat integer math for 3D transforms. The early FPUs were anemic.
thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Today, 00:20:That is my exact plan and I welcome any advice and help. […]
Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 20:42:thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Yesterday, 10:25:It's not fast. Apparently it is faster than the IBM PGC it is a clone of though. This is running on a 10 MHz 286.
Wow, that is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to record and upload a video of that.
I just browsed the manual, and it's very cool to see so much about the card's basic 3D acceleration in there. I know not many people would be able to appreciate it in real-time on real hardware, but it would be interesting if someone put together a very simple 3D game that is actually accelerated by such an old card. I wonder how it works with an original 8088 at 4.77Mhz...
That is my exact plan and I welcome any advice and help.
I started my project https://github.com/trguhq/testglobe/ with this general idea in mind, before I had much of an idea of the performance of the very oldest 3D hardware. testglobe might run in a very rudimentary form on a PGC but it would be very basic, maybe something like the Amiga demo with the spinning globe in my avatar. As of now, the oldest hardware I've run testglobe on is a Sun Ultra 60 (where it runs at pretty much full speed compared to my modern Mac). Other people have run it on older SGIs. That project itself was actually to see the viability of using some older 3D hardware without texture mapping to run quake with just shaded triangles, but that's a topic for another day/thread. It evolved into an "what's the oldest 3D hardware that can spin some form of a globe?"
One thing I want to try is to just use old hardware to do the polygon fills or line drawing, and use an FPU (if available) to do the 3D transforms. So here even a 2D card might be able to usefully accelerate testglobe... or a game. For that I'm thinking a 386 with a coprocessor and a TIGA board. That'd also be through Windows or Mac OS drivers for simplicity, so it could potentially run on a lot of hardware.
For a game I'm thinking a battle mech game which at its most basic would be like Battlezone, but ideally would use filled polygons instead of just lines. I think a PGC is too slow for that. PG-640A might be too slow. A PG-641 though, may be able to make a nice game. That an XT with a PGC could run a 3D game is pretty optimistic, but we'll see. I intend to find out what the hardware can do.
A PG-640A is compatible with a PGC, but I'm not yet certain how compatible a PG-641 is. I'm looking into that now. I love the idea of a single "PGC" version using IBM's interface for apples to apples comparison between cards but it may be more like a PGC version, a Matrox version, and an accelerated-2D version that uses the FPU for 3D.
Sounds like a very cool project.
Playing the original Elite on a PC 5150 gives me the impression that an 8088 can handle just enough to make it worth it, but I don't know if running a 3D accelerator adds additional overhead that would be too much for such a slow CPU.
I don't have a PG-640A or any TIGA variants to run any of this stuff, but I actually got *most* of an IBM PGC from a scrapper last year. Sadly the DAC was gone so the card is non-functional unless I can find one that is compatible, and the card is missing it's bracket. On that note, if anyone has any idea how to get a replacement DAC for a PGC let me know. The datasheets for Intech DACs are basically nonexistent so it's really hard to figure out what models work as a proper replacement. There is some discussion of the topic in this thread.
thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Today, 05:07:For a reality check, this is what an Amiga from 1985 can do with a 68000, 2D acceleration, and no FPU (albeit more slowly than this yet still usably - this is with a very fast processor):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xowft94FILo
Oh wow, that is super impressive! It's so smooth, the on-planet scenes are very complex for the time and it has great music. I can't even imagine my 5150 producing that music, let alone the gameplay... 🤣
Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 05:17:Playing the original Elite on a PC 5150 gives me the impression that an 8088 can handle just enough to make it worth it, but I don't know if running a 3D accelerator adds additional overhead that would be too much for such a slow CPU.
Yeah... We'll have to see. That Matrox demo doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Elite and Frontier were hand crafted and highly optimized just for what they do. The PGC also runs at 6480x480 in 8-bit instead of much lower resolution and bit depth.
That's what I'm aiming for though.
I don't have a PG-640A or any TIGA variants to run any of this stuff, but I actually got *most* of an IBM PGC from a scrapper last year. Sadly the DAC was gone so the card is non-functional unless I can find one that is compatible, and the card is missing it's bracket. On that note, if anyone has any idea how to get a replacement DAC for a PGC let me know. The datasheets for Intech DACs are basically nonexistent so it's really hard to figure out what models work as a proper replacement. There is some discussion of the topic in this thread.
I think the DACs are prone to failure on those. I started that thread. I haven't tried to fix the card again although it should be possible. I've got several "very similar" DACs but not with the exact set of markings. It doesn't quite work but I think I messed the board up with the Hakko desoldering tool.
thisisamigaspeaking wrote on Today, 06:39:Yeah... We'll have to see. That Matrox demo doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Elite and Frontier were hand crafted and highly […]
Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 05:17:Playing the original Elite on a PC 5150 gives me the impression that an 8088 can handle just enough to make it worth it, but I don't know if running a 3D accelerator adds additional overhead that would be too much for such a slow CPU.
Yeah... We'll have to see. That Matrox demo doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Elite and Frontier were hand crafted and highly optimized just for what they do. The PGC also runs at 6480x480 in 8-bit instead of much lower resolution and bit depth.
That's what I'm aiming for though.
I don't have a PG-640A or any TIGA variants to run any of this stuff, but I actually got *most* of an IBM PGC from a scrapper last year. Sadly the DAC was gone so the card is non-functional unless I can find one that is compatible, and the card is missing it's bracket. On that note, if anyone has any idea how to get a replacement DAC for a PGC let me know. The datasheets for Intech DACs are basically nonexistent so it's really hard to figure out what models work as a proper replacement. There is some discussion of the topic in this thread.
I think the DACs are prone to failure on those. I started that thread. I haven't tried to fix the card again although it should be possible. I've got several "very similar" DACs but not with the exact set of markings. It doesn't quite work but I think I messed the board up with the Hakko desoldering tool.
Oh duh, I didn't even notice that was you... 🤣
Dealing with a nasty head cold right now and I'm not running on all cylinders (which isn't saying much anyway).
