VOGONS


CL 54XXXX ???

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First post, by jimpqfly

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Hi guys,

Just received a Cirrus Logic VLB card, but I'm wondering about the exact type?
Chip is 5429, but reference is CLVGA542XVL/H VESA LOCAL BUS REV 2.0, and FC ID is even worse : KDSCIRRUS5426VL !

- Anyone knows what this card exactly is?
- Any idea of how could I upgrade its memory? (type of modules?)

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Reply 1 of 17, by The Serpent Rider

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Anyone knows what this card exactly is?

CL-CD5429. 5424-5429 are pin compatible.

Any idea of how could I upgrade its memory?

Use FPM modules from some S3 Trio card.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 6 of 17, by Eep386

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I used to own one of this very card back in the late 90's. It's about as generic a GD5429 card as they come, but it works perfectly with the GD5426 drivers. (I found the WIndows 3.1 GD5429 drivers rather problematic with the card. GD5426 drivers never gave any trouble though.)

Yeah it takes 256Kx16 FPM SOJ RAM. My card had 70ns chips. I don't think those EDO SOJs will work though. 😖

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 7 of 17, by lazibayer

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Eep386 wrote:

I used to own one of this very card back in the late 90's. It's about as generic a GD5429 card as they come, but it works perfectly with the GD5426 drivers. (I found the WIndows 3.1 GD5429 drivers rather problematic with the card. GD5426 drivers never gave any trouble though.)

Yeah it takes 256Kx16 FPM SOJ RAM. My card had 70ns chips. I don't think those EDO SOJs will work though. 😖

I owned two 486 boards with onboard 5429 chips. They came with 512KB FPM DRAM soldered onboard and I had no problem getting 1MB with another piece of 512KB EDO DRAM installed.

Reply 8 of 17, by Anonymous Coward

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I have the same card. My suggestion is don't bothing upgrading to 2MB. It does practically nothing.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 10 of 17, by jimpqfly

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So... it's a very strange card...

1. I started my 486 with 2x32MBytes of EDO RAM : during the POST, the video card displayed only half of the caracters from 49Mbytes and above during RAM Check... I solved the issue by placing only 16MBytes of RAM (which is not a big deal with DOS6+Win3.11 anyway).

2. Using HWinfo on DOS, I clearly see that 2048Ko are detected on Video Card RAM. So I guess it's a win 😀

3. I installed the 5429 drivers for Windows 3.11. I used CLMode on the boot to setup my screen at 60Hz at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768.
However, in Winmode :
- each time I try to select the 1024x768 resolution, the monitor refresh rate leave me 2 options only : "87 Hz Interleave" (no way for my LCD...), and "Unavailable", so I basically cannot use 1024x768
- with 800x600 I can only choose 16bits colors, and not 32bits. Strange for a 2Mbytes card 😀

Any idea?

Reply 11 of 17, by Anonymous Coward

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Indeed, did you see my previous post about the 2MB upgrade being useless?

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 12 of 17, by debs3759

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It's a QDI card, but I can't find the model name. Not sure if it would be CLVGA5429VL/H

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 13 of 17, by appiah4

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

I have the same card. My suggestion is don't bothing upgrading to 2MB. It does practically nothing.

I have a very similar card, but the 5428 chipset, I was also considering upgrading it to 2MB.. Why doesn't it do anything? Should enable higher resolution and color modes at least? No help with games?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 14 of 17, by blurks

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It's my understanding that the DAC is responsible for the availability of color modes and refresh rates, while the graphics chip just generates the image in conjunction with the framebuffer. Adding an extra Megabyte of RAM is only helpful if the DAC can make practical use of it.

Reply 15 of 17, by Anonymous Coward

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My opinion is that it was only really designed to be a 1MB card, but the 2MB option was tacked on for marketing reasons.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 16 of 17, by Jolaes76

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This GD5429 is a great chip, plays very nice on CRT monitors. Most cards have nice vibrant colors and good centering.
Has good compatibility with a wide range of DOS games and it is definitely on the speedy side - it is even tuneable/overclockable with mCLK and stuff.
As I recall it has good VESA support thru univbe as well.
I found the 5426 a bit slow, the 5428 came OK and the 5429 (with quality RAM) played even larger fan-made DOOM maps with such an ease that it stayed in my AMD 5x86 rig.
The 5429 has basic Windows GUI accelaration which can be useful both for Win 3.x and Win9x.

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 17 of 17, by jimpqfly

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

Indeed, did you see my previous post about the 2MB upgrade being useless?

I did read your answer, don't worry, but I decided to test it anyway, just to see what happens in Windows 3.11. If I wasn't expecting a huge added value, I wasn't expecting either the huge pile of sh-issues I wrote above 😀)))