How about a DSystems Papilio UltraCAD G1-2 ?

Voodoo III - 2000 from 1999

Why not go all the way? Voodoo5 6000.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Why not go all the way? Voodoo5 6000.

Good luck hunting one down.
5500 PCI is More acessible.
Get eighter a V3 pci or a TNT2 PCI (avoid Vanta/M64)

Hmm it would be stretching a bit but there are Geforce 2 MX PCI cards aswell.

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486.
Similar to GF4 MX440 I think, NV34GL Gpu. It even came with the dual head vga splitter cable.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/111975408530? … lpid=107&chn=ps

EDIT. It's the same as a FX5200, not good enough for anything decent those cards, but was an interesting experiment on my 486.

Imperious wrote:

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486. Similar to GF4 MX440 I think, NV […]
Show full quote

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486.
Similar to GF4 MX440 I think, NV34GL Gpu. It even came with the dual head vga splitter cable.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/111975408530? … lpid=107&chn=ps

EDIT. It's the same as a FX5200, not good enough for anything decent those cards, but was an interesting experiment on my 486.

an Fx 5200 preforms like a Geforce 2 MX 400, so its overkill for even an early Pentium II on a 486 its just insane

I stuck an ELSA Gloria XL into a dual PPro system with just PCI slots. You can't game on it, but it makes for a nice vintage CAD or Workstation if you like to dabble in old apps.

Imperious wrote:

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486. Similar to GF4 MX440 I think, NV […]
Show full quote

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486.
Similar to GF4 MX440 I think, NV34GL Gpu. It even came with the dual head vga splitter cable.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/111975408530? … lpid=107&chn=ps

EDIT. It's the same as a FX5200, not good enough for anything decent those cards, but was an interesting experiment on my 486.

Now I like that idea! Workstation card in a server.

Imperious wrote:

I am totally amazed that it worked at all, but I just put a Nvidia Quadro NVS280 Pci in my 486.

Talk about modern graphics on a 486! What version display driver work in Windows 9x and/or NT4? Did opengl and direct3d run properly? What motherboard/CPU?

I actually only booted it into safe mode as I had a S3 card in there and didn't want to screw with the drivers. The motherboard and cpu is listed below. It's a LS-486E Rev D that works with EDO ram. If
there's a downside to this motherboard it is that cache is non upgradeable and only 256k, but good enough for what I want it for.
I could try and see if the nvidia driver will load if You like, but I haven't successfully managed to load DX later than 6.1 on it, dx7 wouldn't install properly. I assume it may not load without Directx on it.
I only installed Win95 on the computer so I can add and remove stuff on the hdd a lot easier.

Interestingly Duke3d ran like a dog at 640x480 but was perfect at 320x200. The S3 card works a lot better, although with a AMD 5x86-133 in there it is actually smooth at 640x480. Intel dx2-66 can't manage
smooth frame rates at that resolution. I could try and install a video speed up utility and see if that speeds it up at SVGA res.

I would be interested to see if you can get D3D working and OpenGL, that is, assuming you can even install the display drivers. I have found that several more modern graphics cards will work in DOS in a socket 3 and the challenge really comes from Windows drivers, D3D, and OpenGL.

feipoa wrote:

I would be interested to see if you can get D3D working and OpenGL, that is, assuming you can even install the display drivers. I have found that several more modern graphics cards will work in DOS in a socket 3 and the challenge really comes from Windows drivers, D3D, and OpenGL.

I tried this last night, I can install 56.xx but I get user32.dll, nvcpl, and other nvidia control panel errors I think related to not having dx8 installed, which isn't possible on a 486.
I couldn't get Quake running either, Opengl invalid page fault I think it was.
I don't know what happens if You install Win95 on a Pentium, update to dx8, then install that hdd in a 486. It would be good if there was a way to force install directx 8 but couldn't
find anything googling. I can select resoltions and 32bit colour no problems. There are some weird resoltions available with this card, like 768x1024, obviously for people to rotate
their monitor 90 degrees.

I have one of those cheap NVS280 cards and was going to test it in an older machine but never got the time so far. Wasn't planning to going back as far as a 486 (especially since I don't have any 486 motherboards with PCI slots) but was planning on using it in a socket 7 mobo, and 2 Voodoo2 in SLI. 😀 Will probably do it in the next few weeks.

The most modern graphics card which I was able to get working on a 486 was a GeForce2 using Detonator drivers version 12.41. The OpenGL games I tested worked, however D3D games did not. I am able to get the display drivers for a GeForce4 working, however OpenGL and D3D games did not work.

I like having my Duel Voodoo 2's in my Duel P3 machine. SLI, SMP machine, tell me that's not sexy?
Also means the primary card is not so important, depending on what your gonna play on it.

I got Direct 8.0a running in my 486 by putting the hdd in my K63 Rig and installing it there. Amazingly everything seemed to work fine. I've posted a screenshot below of
Dxdiag. Interestingly with Dx7.1 installed Dxdiag crashed every time, not so with dx8.
As far as games go I got Monster Truck madness 2 working well, albeit with about 1-5 fps. Rollcage also worked but we're talking SPF not FPS, with about 1 frame every 3-5 seconds.
Even 3dmark99 ran, but again it was seconds per frame, I killed it at the cpu test, which I reckon was going to take around 1/2 hour. Quake Opengl crashed with Opengl.dll errors, also
tried Ut99 and Powerslide, both crashed.
An interesting experiment but this cards coming out, mainly because it has issues running Dos games in SVGA, extremely slow but VGA is fine.
I suspect Monster Truck madness might even be playable with a Amd 5x86 in there. I might try out a 32MB TNT2m64 and see how that fares.

So D3D works, just not OpenGL?

feipoa wrote:

So D3D works, just not OpenGL?

Looks like it. There are Youtube clips of Quake running on 3dfx cards in 486's, but that's minigl I guess. I can't access any D3d or Opengl settings as the control panel
crashes at start up, so I removed that with msconfig. There are forum threads where it's mentioned that the control panel expects win98 not win95. I could have loaded
Rivatuner but really that's adding too much excess background programs and will only slow it down further.