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Help with Trident 9000B 16-bit mode

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First post, by BSA Starfire

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Hi folks,

I have a Trident 9000B 512K graphics card in my 386 SX 33 system, but I can't seem to get it to work in 16-bit mode.
Here's a picture of my card and motherboard etc.

386 bundle.jpg
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It seems to be match this card on statson.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/U- … IDENT-9000.html
And is also very similar to this one.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/U- … -TVGA-9000.html
Currently the jumpers are set like this jp7:closed jp8: closed jp9 a/b/c open. now this should give 16-bit bus operation as far as I can see. but take at look at the Dr Hardware result.

Trident 9000B.JPG
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My Trident 8900B card gives these results when correctly jumpered to 16-bit bus operation.

Trident 8900B.JPG
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Any ideas? I've tried the auto detect jumper(jp8) both enabled and disabled and it makes no difference. It's clearly running as an 8-bit bus card, here's the results from my Realtek RTG3105iEH, a card that is known to only run at an 8-bit bus speed for comparison.
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/U- … -TVGA-9000.html

And yes, I know Trident is a slow card and there are many better choices, but this is a nostalgia build of my first PC & that had a 512K trident. It's just bugging me that I can't get it set properly.

Best regards,
Chris

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286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 1 of 9, by derSammler

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I have that card too in one of my 286 PCs. The thing is, the jumper only changes the BIOS segment used. The 8-bit segment works in a PC/XT, the 16-bit segment only on 286 and up. The speed of the card won't change much, as the chip simply isn't faster.

ps: you can see that the card is indeed in 16-bit mode in the first two lines of the test ("Direct Access Text Mode").

Reply 2 of 9, by BSA Starfire

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Ah, OK so it just changes how the BIOS code is addressed then for 8088/8086 compatibility?
I just came across this, exact same cards as mine and exactly the same results too.

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/about-those-trident-vgas/

I think I'll switch the 9000B for the 8900B then. Or maybe go with the Oak as it is a little faster still and does have a nice image quality.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 3 of 9, by vlask

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Trident 9000 line were most lowend chips, so Trident didn't cared about performance. 8900 line was main highend line of company. Thats why 8900 is faster, despite its older.....

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 4 of 9, by BSA Starfire

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Thanks vlask, its hard to find any definitive data on these cards now. My assumption was the 9000 should be quicker than the 8900 and it was just a settings issue. Does anyone have a table of performance data for the ISA Trident chip revisions? There are quite a few letter variants out there.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 5 of 9, by Jo22

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The TVGA 8900D is quite okay, I believe.
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 6 of 9, by elianda

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I had a 9000 and 8900 in my VGA roundup: http://retronn.de/ftp/docs/eliandas_isa_vga_roundup.pdf

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Reply 7 of 9, by dieymir

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I have a Trident 9000B on a 386sx (@40Mhz) too. The Trident 9000 is the low component (cost) version of the 8900C. You only have to add 3 more chips to have a complete (S)VGA card: BIOS, memory and RAMDAC. The 9000i integrated also a RAMDAC so you need only 2 more chips. 8900CL and 8900D had FIFOs that improve performance like the Tseng Labs ET4000, this is not the case of the 8900B/C and all of the 9000s.

There is a Trident utility named TELLSET.EXE that shows the bus with of Memory, Video RAM and Video RAM WS. I received the card jumpered for 8 bit wide and, like you, I set the jumper for 16bit wide operation. Now TELLSET shows BIOS and Video RAM in 16 bit mode but WS went up from 1 to 2 and I didn't notice significant - if any - performance improvements.

Reply 8 of 9, by vlask

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BSA Starfire wrote:

Thanks vlask, its hard to find any definitive data on these cards now. My assumption was the 9000 should be quicker than the 8900 and it was just a settings issue. Does anyone have a table of performance data for the ISA Trident chip revisions? There are quite a few letter variants out there.

On my site....looks like only good version of Trident is 8900CL-C. All 9000x cards looks same poor performance....

http://vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/bench/quake320.png

http://vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/bench/diaggraphic.png

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 9 of 9, by diagon_swarm

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vlask wrote:

On my site....looks like only good version of Trident is 8900CL-C. All 9000x cards looks same poor performance....

I would recommend you to retest 8900D with more memory. The issue is that yours had only 256kB so it is obvious that the memory access would always be limited to 8bit. These cards use 4bit chips (each 128kB). Trident 8900D is automatically configured based on the number of installed memory chips and the memory bus width is displayed during the boot.

With full 1MB installed, the card reports 32bit memory bus width. I had the card in my 386 and there were even Windows 95 driver that allowed to use true color in 640x480 and high color in 800x600 on this card.

I'm pretty sure that you would measure completely different result if you add the memory.

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