To answer the issue regarding the ATI card + DOS usage: I ran PcpBench with the ATI "co-processor helper" card installed, and it runs OK, and gives me a score. OK, the score is bad, but nevertheless, it runs. I then remove the ATI card, leaving just a Cirrus Logic VGA card installed. I rerun PcpBench. It doesn't work at all - it refuses to run. Isn't that an important feature that the ATI card can do? 640x400 DOS graphics, albeit rather slowly!

I think you are messing things up 😉
I don't think PCPBench utilizes a 8514A at all. What you probably saw was the image of your vga card routed through the VESA connector to the Ati Mach8.

Though you can make a simple test, just leave the VESA cable unplugged and connect your monitor to the Ati Mach8 and check if you get a signal.
Just like a Voodoo2 for itself.

elianda wrote:

I think you are messing things up 😉

That wouldn't be the first time that's happened! 😦 😊

How about I test the ATI Ultra card on Windows 95? Is that possible, I wonder? Would the Windows 95 CD-ROM have a suitable driver on it? At the moment, I've got a 386 mobo set up with Win95. Seems like a good time to try out the ATI Ultra card again. But perhaps ATI didn't write a driver for 95? Perhaps development stopped in the Win 3.11 era? So many questions!

I think Win95 included some sort of driver for it, though I dunno how well it worked... the Mach8 was pretty much obsolete by '94 (or whenever it was that the Mach32 came out), so I wouldn't expect a whole lot of effort went into getting it working on Win95.

I had a browse on ebay, and found this webpage, from the wayback archive -

http://web.archive.org/web/19980128132816/htt … vers/mach8.html (mach8 drivers)

It says for windows 95: "The mach8 drivers bundled with Windows 95 are the most current available." I'm going to try the 8514 card with Win95 some time today... Also, are these ISA video cards any good, I wonder?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=270695459056 (Paradise 1024 VGA Card 16 Bit ISA 256K)

They are boxed, and the seller has 17 of them. My main concern is a good image quality. I don't care about speed. Thanks a lot for any comments.

retro games 100 wrote:

I had a browse on ebay, and found this webpage, from the wayback archive - […]
Show full quote

I had a browse on ebay, and found this webpage, from the wayback archive -

http://web.archive.org/web/19980128132816/htt … vers/mach8.html (mach8 drivers)

It says for windows 95: "The mach8 drivers bundled with Windows 95 are the most current available." I'm going to try the 8514 card with Win95 some time today... Also, are these ISA video cards any good, I wonder?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=270695459056 (Paradise 1024 VGA Card 16 Bit ISA 256K)

They are boxed, and the seller has 17 of them. My main concern is a good image quality. I don't care about speed. Thanks a lot for any comments.

It seems that Paradise card is only 256kb. We'd need to know what chipset is on that card. However, seeing it is boxed and new, that's worth something.

Btw RG100, I 'think' I found your Ebay account...have you been buying stuff like mad? 😜 😉

Tetrium wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

I had a browse on ebay, and found this webpage, from the wayback archive - […]
Show full quote

I had a browse on ebay, and found this webpage, from the wayback archive -

http://web.archive.org/web/19980128132816/htt … vers/mach8.html (mach8 drivers)

It says for windows 95: "The mach8 drivers bundled with Windows 95 are the most current available." I'm going to try the 8514 card with Win95 some time today... Also, are these ISA video cards any good, I wonder?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=270695459056 (Paradise 1024 VGA Card 16 Bit ISA 256K)

They are boxed, and the seller has 17 of them. My main concern is a good image quality. I don't care about speed. Thanks a lot for any comments.

It seems that Paradise card is only 256kb. We'd need to know what chipset is on that card. However, seeing it is boxed and new, that's worth something.

Btw RG100, I 'think' I found your Ebay account...have you been buying stuff like mad? 😜 😉

Nah. but I am mad. 😉

It seems that Paradise card is only 256kb. We'd need to know what chipset is on that card.

It uses the PVGA1B chip... I think more commonly called the WD90C00.

Those things were available in two versions, 256K and 512K. The 256K version has open sockets to upgrade the memory, though 64kx4 memory chips are a bit difficult to come by these days. The '1024' in the model name just indicated its support for 1024x768 resolution.

retro games 100 wrote:

My main concern is a good image quality. I don't care about speed. Thanks a lot for any comments.

I haven't seen issues yet where the image quality of standard vga cards differs a lot on current monitors.
I still have most of the ISA VGA cards from my page http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pictures.html#Grafikkarten

(and probably some more)

So if you require to have reviewed, we might organize some insane retro ISA graphics card roundup session.

I have one of them. I find the image quality very good for an ISA card of that age. At least compared to my other similar ISA cards from OAK and Cirrus.

Mach8 should work just fine in Windows 95. I personally ran a Mach8 ISA card in my 486 until 1997. I'm pretty sure it has NT4 drivers too, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was still included in 2000 and XP as well. For an ISA card, it's pretty quick, but after 95 came out it really started showing it's age. For 95 you really wanted VLB or PCI graphics to do anything graphics intensive.

Thanks a lot for the info, people. I'm really keen on getting this ATI 8514 Ultra "co-pro" card to work. I downloaded the setup software from that wayback archive link I mentioned above. I ran it in DOS, and it configured and tested the card OK. It displayed a 1024x768 test pattern. All seems well. I then removed my DOS CF device, and inserted a Win95 CF device in to my 386 test system. I got to the Win95 desktop, then ran the Add new hardware wizard.

The problem I have is that this hardware wizard can't detect the ATI 8514 card. I don't think the best way forward is to add a new display adapter manually, because that will surely conflict with my "regular VGA" card. Any ideas please people? Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

BTW, I think the 8514 driver is on the Win95 CD-ROM. If I choose to add a display adapter manually, under the manufacturer listing for ATI, it says 8514. I wonder why it's listed in the display adapter section? I expected it to be in the video controller section, because doing it that way, would it not clash with my existing "regular VGA" card?

retro games 100 wrote:

I don't think the best way forward is to add a new display adapter manually, because that will surely conflict with my "regular VGA" card. Any ideas please people? Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

Don't detect and installl by force.
No conflicts, since it's not VGA, it's 8514A.

elianda wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

I don't think the best way forward is to add a new display adapter manually, because that will surely conflict with my "regular VGA" card. Any ideas please people? Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

Don't detect and installl by force.
No conflicts, since it's not VGA, it's 8514A.

Does that mean that I am ready to use the card? If that is true, please can you suggest a test? What software can I run, inside Windows 95, that will allow me to use and test this "co-pro" card? Thanks a lot! 😀

Edit: On the following webpage, it says that Windows 95 has the latest driver. So, surely I need to install it, in order to use the 8514 card. Surely Windows 95 needs to know it's there, and also to have a driver running for it?

http://web.archive.org/web/19980128132816/htt … vers/mach8.html

Does that mean that I am ready to use the card?

I think you're misunderstanding what elianda said. As is the case with any other piece of hardware: if Windows doesn't know it's there, Windows will not use it. If Windows is not finding it automatically, you will have to manually add it.

Manually adding it will not cause a conflict with your VGA card, because the 8514 is not a VGA card.

I would be really grateful if someone can please tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks a lot. I want to add the ATI 8514 Ultra co-pro card to Windows 95. So, here goes:

I pick Display Adapters, because I know that the 8514 is listed there. I don't like this idea, because it conflicts with my VGA video card.

And here is the 8514, listed in this Display Adapters section.

What a surprise!

Ok, let's see if we can manually set up the 8514's resources -

This shows the conflict, and only one memory range can be altered. The rest of the resources cannot be altered. I now have to remove the 8514, because I can't set the resources correctly.

Please can someone tell me how to install the 8514 card in Windows 95. The driver appears to exist, on the Win95 CD-ROM. Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

I've just had a thought. It's a crazy thought, but nevertheless I will say it. Is this what I need to do - when I get Win95 to install the 8514 driver, from the Win95 CD-ROM, it *replaces* my current VGA driver? In this case, I'm using a Western Digital chipset based VGA video card. Is that how the 8514 driver works? It doesn't "sit next to / works alongside" the existing VGA driver - but instead, it completely replaces it.

So, inside my Display Adapter control panel area, I just see the 8514 driver, and I don't see any reference to my Western Digital VGA driver. Doing things that way would solve the problem of both drivers being in conflict with each other! It's just a thought, but I'm curious as to how to get the 8514 to install correctly inside Windows 95. Thanks a lot for any ideas, people.

So what happens if you replace your Paradise VGA driver with the Mach8 one?
Maybe the Mach8 driver just utilizes the standard VGA card in addition to display text modes (f.e. DOS window fulls screen).

So try to replace the WDC driver, if screen goes blank change to the Mach8 connector...

Excellent! Thanks very much for your suggestion, elianda. I have got it working. I will spend some time messing about with WinTune 97, and report back with some comments...