First post, by squareguy
- Rank
- Oldbie
Okay I'll try to explain myself.
I have found that the S3 Virge/DX, 4MB, PCI is my favorite DOS/Win9x video card. End of story right? Well, maybe not.
Okay, so why do I think this is the perfect card? Everyone has their own opinion on what makes a card perfect. For instance what is the perfect car? Some would say it's about speed, others about handling, some would even say it's about off-roading. For me it's about compatibility, nothing more. No fancy features, not about being the fastest and not even about the very best image quality.
I do not like TSR programs for fixes, compatibility and what not. Could we make the S3 Virge/DX better?
I think we can. My Internet searches for my improvement have not turned up any results for a video card but it has been done on other things and is well documented.
What am I suggesting? Bank switching. Selecting between 2 Video BIOS images with a hardware switch before startup.
Why???
The S3 Virge/DX came at an interesting time and had different BIOS's available with VESA 1.2 and VESA 2.0 support. Each have their own quirks but if we can narrow down to a 'good' 1.2 and a 'good' 2.0 BIOS version and be able to switch between them then I think that would be about perfect.
What do you think?
If you are experienced with this sort of thing let me know as I am not but it looks straight forward enough.
Here are my references so far.
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
https://www.jaapsch.net/psion/pdffiles/Eprom0 … heet_27C512.pdf
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?100 … -to-get-2-banks
Gateway 2000 Case and 200-Watt PSU
Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard
Intel Pentium III 450 CPU
Micron 384MB SDRAM (3x128)
Compaq Voodoo3 3500 TV Graphics Card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
Western Digital 7200-RPM, 8MB-Cache, 160GB Hard Drive
Windows 98 SE