ELSA GLoria Synergy-8 ViVo (3Dlabs Permedia 2) VESA VBE support? \ VOGONS

ELSA GLoria Synergy-8 ViVo (3Dlabs Permedia 2) VESA VBE support?

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First post, by RayeR

Posted on 2021-08-31, 03:11

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Hi, I saved this PCI VGA from a scrap because seemed to me interesting when I recall old reviews from '90 it was some kind of Pro card for 3D/CAD apps and quite high priced so I never touched this till now. I found an old site with drivers collection that is really amazing that it supported a lot of DOS SW and even it has NT4 drivers for DEC Alpha64...

BUT I was very disappointed when seen really the worst VESA VBE support - or is it a bug just on my card?
It reports VBE has only 512kB available and only 2 VESA modes: 640x400, 640x480/8bpp. And this modes seems to work only bank-switching. When I loaded UniVBE/SDD it recognized the card and added total 33 VESA modes up to 1600x1200/16bpp that seems to work in LFB. Also reported VRAM size has increased to 8MB as expected. I flashed the latest VBIOS 7.03 but any change. VMT with loaded UniVBE passed the VRAM test without any error. Also the DOS setup utility was able to set any graphics mode and draw a test screen so it seems my card is OK. But I wondered about this because other VGAs from this age had already decent VBE 2.0 or 3.0 support with tens of modes.

So I'd like to see experiences of other owners how about their VBE. There was VGAs with Permedia 2 chip from different manufacturers like Diamond and Creative so there may be chance they did a better job on VBIOS than ELSA did.

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX670(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo

Reply 1 of 7, by pixel_workbench

Posted on 2021-09-02, 17:47

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I have a Diamond FireGL 1000pro 8MB AGP version of the Permedia 2, and it only has the same two reported VESA modes as you listed, with only 512K available. Haven't tried any tweaks to improve it though.

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Reply 2 of 7, by RayeR

Posted on 2021-09-03, 01:08

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Thanks for confirmation. So it seems all this Permedia 2 cards use poor 3Dlabs videobios with just customized boot-up message so only workaround is to load UniVBE/SDD...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX670(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo

Reply 3 of 7, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2021-09-03, 02:19

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VESA modes on Permedia 2 are crap even with UniVBE.

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

Reply 4 of 7, by RayeR

Posted on 2021-09-03, 10:55

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Yes, some programs displays mess with UniVBE... I still wonder how it is possible on a card from 1997 where VESA was widely accepted standard and every other card had much better VBE implementation.

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX670(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo

Reply 5 of 7, by dr.zeissler

Posted on 2021-09-03, 13:31

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I never got it why univbe should support lot's and lot's of resolution and bitdepth's on my matrox cards... in reality some demos/intros thet require these do not work, even with loaded and setup univbe.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 6 of 7, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2021-09-03, 19:09

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I still wonder how it is possible on a card from 1997 where VESA was widely accepted standard and every other card had much better VBE implementation.

Because they didn't care. Permedia 2 was a budget card for workstation environment. You don't need VESA support there. Although it's interesting to note, that they've implemented proper VESA on newer cards. Wildcat video card family works good with VESA.

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

Reply 7 of 7, by RayeR

Posted on 2021-09-25, 22:45

RayeR Offline

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Ok, that makes sense as they provide also driver for NT-Alpha64 that is quite rare - I don't have any other VGA with Alpha drivers. But Creative Labs and Diamond was aimed more to gamers so they could spent some money to implement VBE on theirs cards. They rather belived that windows gaming is the future so it didn't worth...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX670(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo

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