Just FYI, I found a high-end Pentium-60 system at work some time ago. It featured S3 Vision 864 videocard, Toshiba PCI IDE controller, Prime 2 ISA I/O and only 16 Mb RAM. It has bever been upgraded. Even tough it does not seem cool, I imagine it was worth quite a lot. I suppose a high-end S3 card from a respected manufacturer would be perfect.

I'll just respond to the Jazz16 sound card bit - no they're not PAS16 compatible and not worth a whole lot based on my experience. There's lots of info in this thread:

Media Vision Jazz 16 - anyone use one of these?

In 1993 I suppose the Gravis UltraSound was the card to have, especially for demos.
Pair it with a Sound Blaster Pro/16 for Adlib/SB compatibility and you'd have a fine setup. That's what I was rocking around 1993 😀

http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/doc/historysm.png
Tseng ET6000 is 1996.
Alternatives to ET4000: Paradise (90C33) (don't know how good PCI WD cards are, ISA cards were very fast), S3 928-P.

I think the ET4000W32i (maybe the p) came out in 1993. S3 had the 805 and 928. ATi had the Mach32. Check out the review from PC Magazine dec 1993. I believe there is a graphics card roundup around page 251.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=7k7q-wS0t00C … 0system&f=false

Not sure about "cutting edge", but, at least for me, Roland MT-32 and Sound Canvas were the devices you would read and dream about when I was a teenager. So I would go with that. As for graphics, the usual suspects from Tseng, WD or Cirrus Logic.

I forgot about the gravis, I was thinking they came out later. the card I already have is an ATI mach32 dated as 1994. I never hear much about these cards so I always assume they are kinda so/so.

the PC itself hasn't arrived yet. its the cheapo one from ebay where the case is missing the cover, I couldn't resist. I'm curious what card is already installed in it but i'm guessing nothing fancy. I was able to make out the sound card which looks to be a very early Vibra based SB16 Acer Magic S30

philscomputerlab wrote:

Not sure about "cutting edge", but, at least for me, Roland MT-32 and Sound Canvas were the devices you would read and dream about when I was a teenager.

Why? MT-32 was quite outdated by 1993 standards, and Sound Canvas had decent quality sound, but wasn't quite as flexible as the Gravis UltraSound.
They can't do things like this: http://youtu.be/7mWbnVPwX4U
Or this: http://youtu.be/tjgnyLp_JFw

The MT-32/Sound Canvas emulation on the GUS is not that bad either. I used to play Doom and Doom II with MegaEm, because it sounded a lot better than the samples that ID included for GUS. I used my Sound Blaster Pro for sound effects, which also sounded better than the GUS (Doom has very lo-fi sound effects... the SB has this fat, dirty sound that just works. With the GUS you hear the sounds for what they really are, which is low quality and thin-sounding).

I think that you'll find graphics cards from 1993 all had their flaws. They were either fast in windows or fast in DOS, and some were just so so at both. However, I believe the #9 GXE based on the S3 928 was the way to go, because it had VRAM for Windows and DRAM for DOS.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I think that you'll find graphics cards from 1993 all had their flaws. They were either fast in windows or fast in DOS, and some were just so so at both.

I guess you could argue that Windows performance isn't very interesting, if you're looking mainly at a box for playing (DOS) games.
I know I never spent any attention on Windows performance. Raw DOS fillrate is what I picked my cards on. At some point Matrox arrived, and you could have both 😀

If you want to experience 1993 in all its glory, Windows 3.x is a must.

Well, WD90C31 was very fast for DOS and also good for Windows (don't have comparison benchmarks for Windows, though), but that's ISA. Soviet conscript seems to be interested in early PCI cards. I suppose Windows (3.11) performance should not be an issue.

I think it's going to be pretty slim pickins for PCI cards from 1993. According to this PC magazine from December 1993 they were using prototype PCI VGA cards for their VLB-PCI comparison. However, there are systems being advertised in this issue which means PCI graphics cards must have become available in very late 1993. Skimming through the magazine I can find PCI VGA based on ATi Mach32, Matrox MGA II, Weitek Power9000 and S3 928.

What is MGA II? The Millennium was the first Matrox card to offer good DOS speed, and it came out in 1995.
If Soviet conscript already has an ATI Mach32 PCI card he should just benchmark it first.

idspispopd wrote:

What is MGA II?

Probably he meant Storm based Millennium. Was it available before the end of 1994?

Shouldn't cutting edge be more special? I don't know much, but what about cards like ProGraphics 1024?

PCI cards do seem to be slim pickings for 1993, many of the cards mentioned (ProGraphics 1024, #9 GXE) seem to only be commonly available in VLB and the rare PCI versions I did see were being offered for outrageous prices, or at least more then I would be willing to dish out for a fun project. I think I would certainly be willing to extend the search into 1994 just to help open some possibilities for early PCI but defiantly keep things pre Windows 95.

The ATI mach32 I have is dated 1994 and I do remember testing it in a P120 system some time ago and it gave decent results but it doesn't really feel, as Putas puts is "special". Were the Mach cards considered anything fancy back then? I see the mach64 was high end and was avaliable in 1994. The vision cards interest me as well as I've never messed around with them much and generally hear good things. 1994 S3 Vision 864 cards seem to be rather plentiful but then I don't know if there anything to bother about. I don't have a lot of experience in this era as back in the early 90's my family was all Commodore. I was rocking a C64C and my dad had an Amiga 500. I didn't get my own PC until early probably.

RacoonRider wrote:

Just FYI, I found a high-end Pentium-60 system at work some time ago. It featured S3 Vision 864 videocard, Toshiba PCI IDE controller, Prime 2 ISA I/O and only 16 Mb RAM. It has bever been upgraded. Even tough it does not seem cool, I imagine it was worth quite a lot. I suppose a high-end S3 card from a respected manufacturer would be perfect.

got the board today and the cards with it. setup is very similar to what you describe here, 66mhz Pentium, 24mb RAM, diamond stealth64 S3 vision 864 based, winbond ISA I/O, fdd, hdd controller, acer magic sb16 vibra card.

Wouldn't an MPEG decoder be a must for a cutting edge '93 multimedia rig?
I remember being completely blown away by a computer playing Jurassic Park--in FULL SCREEN--at a computer show I went to in 93 or 94. Sure, the picture quality probably wasn't even up to VHS standards, but still, it was a computer playing a full movie with more than 256 colors in a frame larger than 120x90! 😲

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Wouldn't an MPEG decoder be a must for a cutting edge '93 multimedia rig?
I remember being completely blown away by a computer playing Jurassic Park--in FULL SCREEN--at a computer show I went to in 93 or 94. Sure, the picture quality probably wasn't even up to VHS standards, but still, it was a computer playing a full movie with more than 256 colors in a frame larger than 120x90! 😲

ha, yes, so I can play me some VCD's. I actually think I have a few of those around here.