Cool stuff! Were these released in 1995? Surprising that they did Texture Mapping!

Yes, the chip on my card is from week 38 of 1995 and the box also has copyright dated to 1995.

Though NitroX probably has these, I've attached the actual datasheets. 😀

No, I did not have those. Thank you 😀 I'll update my post with info from those files.

You're welcome! 😀 If you are looking for permanent links, I also uploaded them to VGAMuseum.info.

I'm trying to contact Yamaha, to ask them questions about the chips. But I'm running into a roadblock here, there doesn't seem to be a general contact e-mail address, all they have is contact forms for recent music instruments and hifi. Anyone got an idea how to get in touch with them?

I've contacted russian Yamaha's department about two years ago. They told me that department which worked with those chips was closed long ime ago, they didn't provide me with any useful info actually. May be ex-engineer who worked on RPA's could help, but this is can be a trouble finding him:)

These look pretty neat! Any info on OpenGL compatibility or performance? Or perhaps a comparison with other cards at the time such as 3dlabs GLINT?

Interesting piece of hardware. Thanks for the info, NitroX and Stiletto!

I don't know anything about OpenGL support. I know the chips support RenderWare, BRender and RenderMorphics and support for Direct3D was announced.

As for performance, Hopefully I'll be benchmarking my YGV612 pretty soon. But I don't know if I can provide FPS numbers.

NitroX infinity wrote:

I'm trying to contact Yamaha, to ask them questions about the chips. But I'm running into a roadblock here, there doesn't seem to be a general contact e-mail address, all they have is contact forms for recent music instruments and hifi. Anyone got an idea how to get in touch with them?

Slaventus86 wrote:

I've contacted russian Yamaha's department about two years ago. They told me that department which worked with those chips was closed long ime ago, they didn't provide me with any useful info actually. May be ex-engineer who worked on RPA's could help, but this is can be a trouble finding him:)

NitroX, usually you want "Yamaha Semiconductor" for these questions.
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/

I've been down these roads before, for other Yamaha chips (audio). Yes, often the departments are closed and they no longer have info.

But let me tell you, I have had tons of LUCK. So perhaps I will take on this challenge for you guys.

Some reviews and an advertisement from 1995:

CGW advertisement November 1995: [ Page 1 ]
Reviews: [ Dimension 3D 01.08.96 ] [ User review 11.30.96 ]

@Stiletto; Thank you 😀

NitroX infinity wrote:

@Stiletto; Thank you 😀

No problem NitroX, I like a good challenge.

You should see my to-do list... 😁

Thus far, communications with Yamaha LSI yields the expected results: nothing. So now we go off-road, as Slaventus86 suggested...

BTW, in the PCI ID tables out there you can find reference to:
VEN_1073&DEV_0002 Yamaha® RPA3 3D Graphics YGV615

This must be even rarer! I see you already know about it
http://forum.beyond3d.com/archive/index.php/t-52625.html
but other than what I've wrote, extremely little is known.

I was looking into it a few weeks ago and I did find (from six years ago) one owner of the Yamaha RPA3, they claimed it was in their laptop. Lost the link again but it's around somewhere...
[EDIT] here: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid= … 01212644AAy8pqU

However, it could have been a misidentified PCI ID (I've had this happen once on a defective motherboard) or just someone who didn't know what they were talking about. No IP address or email address, seemed hopeless to track that person down. 😉

Notes:
"RPA3 was only 16 bit color in Windows and was memory hungry" - http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?11 … ll=1#post843939

I see you already know about it

No I did not. And if it is just a mobile chip, it won't be of much interest to me.

NitroX infinity wrote:

I see you already know about it

No I did not. And if it is just a mobile chip, it won't be of much interest to me.

no-X isn't you on Beyond3D? Go figure... *shrug*

But yeah, it wouldn't be too interesting if it's a mobile chip. Still, it appears to be the last one in the RPA series.

Nope, I'm NitroX infinity pretty much everywhere or something similar (nitroxinfinity, nitrox_infinity, etc) I'm registered on Beyond3D but can't post there; the activation e-mail doesn't get through my ISP's spamfilter.

Images, video and more info on the card here:
Re: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

Manual scanned and uploaded to Vogonsdrivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=705