Fancy finding 4 MB soldered onto the VLB graphics card. Is this the only VLB card which had 4 MB soldered directly, that is, no in upgrade sockets or an upgrade expansion board?

There aren't many 4MB VLB cards to begin with.

I can find a couple more, at least, a Diamond Stealth64 also based on the Vision964 chipset. http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/news/item … lb-s3-vision964 AnonymousCoward seems to have another NumberNine Card, the #9 Motion FX 771 with 4MB VRAM based on the S3 Vision968. VL/EISA SMP Pentium (turbocharged)

I don't think any Mach64 VLB cards had 4MB on board. My CL-GD5434 based Orchid Kelvin 64-VLB only has 2MB maximum memory.

Wow! check this bad boy out! An ELSA Winner 2000 VLB, S3 928 with 4MB on board. http://www.amoretro.de/2012/10/elsa-winner-20 … rafikkarte.html

I have a Diamond branded S3 968 with 4 MB, but it has 2 MB on an expansion card. The ultimate is to use the MPEG-1 decoder card with it, which comes with 2 MB on the expansion card. http://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_graphics_c … 00_front.html#0

I have an ISA Mach 64 with 4 MB, but again, 2 MB expansion module. I've never seen 4 MB on a VLB Mach 64. Do they exist?

I like the 4 MB because it lets you run 1280x1024 with at least 16-bit colour. This means I can use my desktop's monitor w/KVM and use the LCD's natural resolution.

That ELSA Winner is a beast. Looks like a lot of empty space on the PCB though.

I do possess an MGA Ultima VLB 2+ which has sockets for filling up the last two megabytes of memory. I have seen pictures of the same card with all 4 megs soldered onto the card, instead of the brown sockets.

However, the Ultima is not a gamers choice. It's best suited for graphical stuff in windows NT / 3.11 / 95.

oeuvre wrote:

hnnng this is making me want to build a 486

i would if i could find parts cheap

Ditto, I have a 486DX-50 and the only thing missing that I need are a ISA GPU and a AT PSU

There is a fairly uncommon DRAM variant of the Mach64 VLB which appears could accept 4MB of onboard RAM. At least, that is what I conclude from following the traces to the memory. However, I don't believe it ever sold with more than 2MB. It seems that ATi had originally planned a 4MB DRAM version, but then scrapped it and went with a cheaper 2MB PCB. The 4MB PCBs were probably all sold off as 2MB parts to recover losses.

So there weren't any memory expansion connectors on the VLB variants? That is really too bad. Its also surprising that ATI had the expansion connectors on the ISA PCBs.

Hi, everyone,

Expect a bit more action here now that I've finally gotten some bigger things taken care of!

Earlier in this thread, someone requested the BIOS dump for the Number Nine #9GXE64 Pro VLB card. Elsewhere, someone needed the BIOS for the motherboard, the QDI V4P895P3/SMT v5.0.

So, they're attached.

The Motherboard BIOS was on a TI TMS27C256 64K, and the video card was on an ST M27C256B 32K.

You should try an old hard drive like the Conner IDE for that Retro clicking sound.
They do not make much of a Performance difference on a 486-66 computer.
The CPU will be your biggest bottle-neck in performance.

This one was made in Italy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWoqtu_2ic0