VOGONS


First post, by brostenen

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Hi...
I have noticed, that ISA vga cards, tend to have this distortion ISA VGA output crap on LCD?, and acording to it, it is the ramdac or something that are too weak. Well... That was what I understood from the tread.

I did a quick search on eBay, and came up with this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-VGA-SVGA-Video … AkAAOSw5VFWMcbn
Wich I have bought and plan on testing out. It might work, and if it does solve the issue, I will share the info.

Any thoughts on this? It seems like a better and more convenient solution, compared to changing the actual Ramdac.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 1 of 17, by Rhuwyn

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What it's doing is amplifying the signal so it does not degrade when being output to 4 monitors. Without amplifying the signal the VGA couldn't drive that many monitors. The question is will it actually improve the original signal beyond the original strength. That I am not sure about.

Reply 2 of 17, by brostenen

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It did say 150mhz output signal, as far as I understand it.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
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Reply 3 of 17, by elianda

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Do you see this also on a CRT?
Looks more like the TFT is pronouncing this extraordinarily. I can see this sometimes when capturing but not as strong.

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Reply 4 of 17, by brostenen

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elianda wrote:

Do you see this also on a CRT?
Looks more like the TFT is pronouncing this extraordinarily. I can see this sometimes when capturing but not as strong.

That's the problem, as I don't have any CRT. 🙁
This box is cheap, and I thought that why not give it a go.
Can't hurt having this for other uses eighter.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 5 of 17, by PhilsComputerLab

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For the vertical bands, try adjusting the clock setting manually.

Also try the auto adjust feature on a variety of images, it doesn't always work well with certain games. The image linked on in your first post for example is not centered, telling me the auto adjust hasn't been used.

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Reply 6 of 17, by brostenen

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

For the vertical bands, try adjusting the clock setting manually.

Also try the auto adjust feature on a variety of images, it doesn't always work well with certain games. The image linked on in your first post for example is not centered, telling me the auto adjust hasn't been used.

How do I adjust the clock?
I dont't want to overclock it or anything.
It is after all old ISA vga cards.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 7 of 17, by wbc

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I've got same issue after removing LC-filters from my Tseng ET6000 and S3 Trio64V2/DX cards (but it's barely visible and probably caused by misadjusted LCD monitor). Also my Trident TVGA9000C w/ TKD80001 RAMDAC has this issue out of box, so it it probably caused by incorrect monitor settings or degraded LC-filters or RAMDACs on videocard.

--wbcbz7

Reply 8 of 17, by brostenen

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Yeah..... It is visible on both of my TFT Monitors.
Even when I fiddle with the settings on each monitors.
The tread I linked to, it was mentioned that CRT's solved it.
It was something with the output frequency and I thought that a signal booster might solve it. So... Yeah... Bought that box, as it has signal boosting build into it.

As I wrote. I will test it and report back if it solved it, when I recieve that box.

EDIT:
For the record. It is only visible on ISA cards. My ET4000 card (slightly) and these cards that I have borowed from a fellow collector: CL-5420, and another ET4000. And as I have no access to an Trident, I can not say if they have the same issue at all on my 286, 386 and 486 ISA-only systems.

Last edited by brostenen on 2016-05-31, 10:23. Edited 1 time in total.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
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Reply 9 of 17, by PhilsComputerLab

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Clock is just a menu setting 😀

Try different resolutions. PC Player benchmark is good for this as it supports all sorts of resolution from DOS.

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Reply 10 of 17, by brostenen

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Clock is just a menu setting 😀

Try different resolutions. PC Player benchmark is good for this as it supports all sorts of resolution from DOS.

That's the strange part of it. Dyna-Blaster makes no issue, Monkey Island and Civ1 makes these issues. Mostly noticeable on white and other light colours. Same issue on each cards that I have tried. So, it is not the cards as far as I can tell, that are giving up. It is most likely the monitor's that have an issue with the output signal. The issue is present on a more modern machine too, before I install the drivers. Mostly on Rage-II-Pro-Pci in Win9x.

EDIT:
Lotus the ultimate challenge makes this issue too on my ISA-only systems.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 11 of 17, by wbc

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Did some fiddling and figured out that this issue occures mostly in 320x200\400 resolutions, and most LCD monitors stretch it to 720x400, making this vertical bars visible, so probably it's a scaling artifact also.

--wbcbz7

Reply 12 of 17, by elianda

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Maybe setting a different refresh rate with vmode is a convenient solution. Most cheap TFTs do 50 Hz to 75 Hz.

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Reply 13 of 17, by brostenen

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Good to know. Thanks for sharing. Some cards are worse than other cards. Yet it does occour on all the same games. Only a question on how visible the issue are displayet. I can't but think, that it might be solved all together, with a higher refresh rate. Wich I don't know if can be set in Dos-6.22 and earlier.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
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Reply 14 of 17, by elianda

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As already written for your ET4000 vmode should work. To save you finding the tool, here is a source: ftp://retronn.de/driver/TSENG/ET4000/
It's a multi functional tool, read the DOC.

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Reply 15 of 17, by brostenen

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Thanks. 😀

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 16 of 17, by Jepael

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wbc wrote:

Did some fiddling and figured out that this issue occures mostly in 320x200\400 resolutions, and most LCD monitors stretch it to 720x400, making this vertical bars visible, so probably it's a scaling artifact also.

Actually the TFT monitor does not "stretch" the image, but since 320x200 format timings cannot be reliably distinguished from 720x400 timings, they just think it is a 720 pixel wide format because it is better for text and sample the analog signal assuming it has 720 pixels per scanline. This makes the artifacts between pixels much more visible with 640 or 320 pixels wide formats and cannot be adjusted away from TFT menus.

The artifacts are more visible because of insufficient or ripped off DAC filters, they are there for a purpose. Many older (read: ISA) cards did not really have them, as they thought it will be connected to analog equipment, and never anticipated someone would sample the signal with an ADC as TFTs do.

Reply 17 of 17, by brostenen

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Well.... Some updates, and it went slightly as I thought it would and mostly as people here have told me.
I don't regret the purchase of this box anyway, it's a nifty little piece of hardware on it's own terms.

Anyway.
So I bought this little box, in order to see how TFT's will act upon this box connected.
And it removed some of these "bands" that the monitor makes.
Not all, by far, it removes something like 5/10 percent.
What it does, is to boost the quality of the signal (primaerly).

So what does this mean? Well.
It means that it clears up the signal and for some reason, it makes my IBM TFT's work
on old my ET4000 card.
Yes. My IBM monitors that would loose sync and go into powersaving on this card, will
keep on running. I think it is because it boosts the signal.

All in all.... This makes the life of old hardware, expand into the future.
Monitors that would normally not keep on displaying vga signal, will keep on working.
And these IBM TFT's have a great image to them. Removing further "bands" from
the actual ET4000-ISA card. Nice. 😜

The monitors in question are these: 6734-AB9 and 9329-AB9
https://support.lenovo.com/dk/da/documents/migr-55844
https://support.lenovo.com/dk/da/documents/migr-58562

In some bizarre way. This is a Win-Win situation for me.
Note... There is no real difference on an Samsung Syncmaster 172v TFT.
Other than removing some of the "bands". Maby 5 to 10%.

(VGA cables that are good shielded and with two ferrit cores are a MUST)

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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