There was this POST here only some days ago with a very similar if not even the same approach:
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Same story with dedicated VRAM plus DRAM for graphics processing onboard without having too much bus load.

Searching on the net brings you to e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instrumen … cs_Architecture
https://retro.swarm.cz/tag/tms34020/
and
https://retro.swarm.cz/sgi-irisvision-add-in- … or-for-pc-1990/
(see the video at the very end of the page)

Very interesting stuff for its time but also very much useless today.

acl wrote on 2023-02-16, 07:06:

If the card inside is the one shown in the picture, then I have it and there is nothing special about it. It's as good as any ot […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-16, 02:49:

Also grabbed this recently. I seem to be a sucker for weird sound card and video card boxes. This one is still sealed, though I am moderately curious what is in the box.

If the card inside is the one shown in the picture, then I have it and there is nothing special about it.
It's as good as any other vortex 1 👍

Edit : this may be a standard design as mine is from Aztech
IMG_20230113_134345.jpg

Yeah, based on the picture I figured it'd be the standard Vortex 1 that other companies sold, I just wonder what the software and accessories look like. I won't be opening it to find out... I'm just curious. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-16, 14:22:

acl wrote on 2023-02-16, 07:06:

If the card inside is the one shown in the picture, then I have it and there is nothing special about it. It's as good as any ot […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-16, 02:49:

Also grabbed this recently. I seem to be a sucker for weird sound card and video card boxes. This one is still sealed, though I am moderately curious what is in the box.

If the card inside is the one shown in the picture, then I have it and there is nothing special about it.
It's as good as any other vortex 1 👍

Edit : this may be a standard design as mine is from Aztech
IMG_20230113_134345.jpg

Yeah, based on the picture I figured it'd be the standard Vortex 1 that other companies sold, I just wonder what the software and accessories look like. I won't be opening it to find out... I'm just curious. 😀

If it was my box, i would open it anyway 😁

dionb wrote on 2023-02-16, 07:06:

Indeed, the same article says of the 3GA: "The chip supported 4 Mbytes of VRAM for resolutions up to 2048 × 2048 and refresh rat […]
Show full quote

HanSolo wrote on 2023-02-16, 02:01:

[...]

This source says about their previous chip:
"The AIB had 2 Mbytes of VRAM and a 72-pin SIMM socket for DRAM expansion which could hold up to 8 Mbytes of 80S DRAM used for Z-buffering and for display list storage."

Indeed, the same article says of the 3GA:
"The chip supported 4 Mbytes of VRAM for resolutions up to 2048 × 2048 and refresh rates up to 90 Hz at 1600 × 1200, as well as up to 8 Mbytes of DRAM."

There's more out there about it, including this article claiming that the 3GA was essentially designed in 1992 but due to manufacturing economics (it would have cost USD 500 per card back then) it didn't actually get made until 1995.
https://thisoldtech.ca/the-saga-of-the-artist … cs-accelerator/

That explains the odd dichotomy of - for the period - huge amounts of RAM being run incredibly slowly.

The 3GA supports 32 bit color modes, texture mapping and high resolutions which all require a lot of memory. That thing sounds pretty impressive for the time. I never heard about the company.

Don't think the DRAM can be used as plain frame buffer, the documentation's pretty clear on available modes being limited by the mount of VRAM on board.

Z-buffering makes sense, but despite name-dropping in both these articles I'm struggling to find anything resembling a list of supported software.

This is all very intriguing. I think this card deserves it's own thread so we can fully explore it's capabilities. 😁

Also, it makes me think a bit of this odd-ball Salient Systems card I found a while back:
Salient Systems Corp. AT3000 - Sierra Falcon64 + TIGA ISA VGA Card from 1995!

It's a Sierra Falcon64 (very late chip for ISA) with 1MB of RAM on an ISA card coupled with a relatively ancient TIGA accelerator that supports up to 10MB of VRAM.

I found this Apple II graphic mouse. Built (and looking) like a tank. And is heavy like one too.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-16, 02:40:

I wonder if that particular chip has the same 3D "capabilities" (or incapabilities) as the Trident 3DImage chips from the same time period.

As far as I know those Cyber chips were marketed as having 3D hardware acceleration, but in reality it was just regular software rendering with a hardware upscaler or something useless like that, so they're even worse than the 3DImage ones.

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Finally received my Acorp 5ALI61 motherboard today. I've got one of those modded K6-2+ 570 processors in there running at 600.

Currently memtesting a couple of 128mb sticks of PC100 memory before doing something with it this weekend.

This should be the last variation of my socket 7 dos/98 machine, it'll likely have a geforce or radeon of some sort and if they'll fit my 2 Voodoo 2 cards. I think the cpu socket might be too close to the PCI slots though.

EDIT - confirmed the socket is way too close. Oh well.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doesn't have visibly bad caps.

Being that the board is a KT133, it is limited to 200Mhz FSB CPUs. The KT133A supports 266Mhz.

So, you will be somewhat limited on what chips you can use in it. If you wanted to upgrade you'd only be looking at 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4Ghz models with 200Mhz FSB, but I don't know how common they are. Personally, I'd just stick with the one that's in it unless you find something faster for cheap or already have one. The wattage of those chips creeps up really fast as the clock speed increases. I remember how toasty my old 1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird got.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 2,_180_nm)

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Go super careful demounting and remounting that cooler, those Orbs are core crushers. Lost a Duron to one myself back in the day. Still got one but keep it well away from bare cores now, mentally labelled for heatspreadered CPU only (PPGA Celly, Tualatin)

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-17, 05:39:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Go super careful demounting and remounting that cooler, those Orbs are core crushers. Lost a Duron to one myself back in the day. Still got one but keep it well away from bare cores now, mentally labelled for heatspreadered CPU only (PPGA Celly, Tualatin)

Hopefully the seller takes care with it too !

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-17, 05:00:

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doe […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doesn't have visibly bad caps.

Being that the board is a KT133, it is limited to 200Mhz FSB CPUs. The KT133A supports 266Mhz.

So, you will be somewhat limited on what chips you can use in it. If you wanted to upgrade you'd only be looking at 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4Ghz models with 200Mhz FSB, but I don't know how common they are. Personally, I'd just stick with the one that's in it unless you find something faster for cheap or already have one. The wattage of those chips creeps up really fast as the clock speed increases. I remember how toasty my old 1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird got.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 2,_180_nm)

For a DOS/98se rig an Athlon 1.1 should be pretty dang fast, doubt either OS will need more grunt than that to run just about anything of that period, trying to decide which GPU would suit it, I have a ATI 9600XT which would work nice or I could go for a Geforce 2 or Geforce 3, I also have a Voodoo5 5500 that I could throw in it. I don't have many ATI cards from that period to pick from but I was musing over if the bratty Fury MAXX would work in this board ...Ive heard that KT133 seems to get along with it. (Just remembered I have a 128bit Radeon 9250 stashed in a box somewhere)

This is the problem I think all retro collectors have .. too many choices for GPUs.

Edit - out of curiosity I looked at how much the Athlon 1400 A1400AMS3B goes for and 25 - 35 USD seems to be what they list for, whats criminal isn't the price but the postage+import costs ...nearly twice what the CPU sells for. So unless I see one locally the 1.1 will be more than enough !

Edit2 - Do the 266 FSB models clock back to 200 FSB and can have their Multi changed ? or are they locked to their set FSB and Multipliers ? I never played around with Thunderbird CPUs back in the day.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 06:44:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-17, 05:00:

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doe […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doesn't have visibly bad caps.

Being that the board is a KT133, it is limited to 200Mhz FSB CPUs. The KT133A supports 266Mhz.

So, you will be somewhat limited on what chips you can use in it. If you wanted to upgrade you'd only be looking at 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4Ghz models with 200Mhz FSB, but I don't know how common they are. Personally, I'd just stick with the one that's in it unless you find something faster for cheap or already have one. The wattage of those chips creeps up really fast as the clock speed increases. I remember how toasty my old 1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird got.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 2,_180_nm)

For a DOS/98se rig an Athlon 1.1 should be pretty dang fast, doubt either OS will need more grunt than that to run just about anything of that period, trying to decide which GPU would suit it, I have a ATI 9600XT which would work nice or I could go for a Geforce 2 or Geforce 3, I also have a Voodoo5 5500 that I could throw in it. I don't have many ATI cards from that period to pick from but I was musing over if the bratty Fury MAXX would work in this board ...Ive heard that KT133 seems to get along with it. (Just remembered I have a 128bit Radeon 9250 stashed in a box somewhere)

This is the problem I think all retro collectors have .. too many choices for GPUs.

Yeah, that's a tough choice! Part of me is thinking Voodoo 5, because they are a fantastic match and according to wikipedia were released only two months apart (V5 in June of 2000, Athlon 1.1Ghz in August). Couple it with an Aureal Vortex 2 of some kind and you've got a fantastic Windows 9x system with Glide and A3D 2.0 support. If you throw in something like an ISA ESS audiodrive or maybe a different card with good FM and a good quality (hardware) wavetable synth you'll have tons of options to tinker with, assuming you can get the resources sorted out. Also, I'd recommend some additional cooling if you go with a Voodoo 5, just to keep it happy.

If you didn't want to risk wearing out a card as rare and expensive as a Voodoo 5 you could use any of the other cards and probably have a similar or better experience with a Glide wrapper.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-17, 06:57:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 06:44:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-17, 05:00:

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doe […]
Show full quote

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doesn't have visibly bad caps.

Being that the board is a KT133, it is limited to 200Mhz FSB CPUs. The KT133A supports 266Mhz.

So, you will be somewhat limited on what chips you can use in it. If you wanted to upgrade you'd only be looking at 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4Ghz models with 200Mhz FSB, but I don't know how common they are. Personally, I'd just stick with the one that's in it unless you find something faster for cheap or already have one. The wattage of those chips creeps up really fast as the clock speed increases. I remember how toasty my old 1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird got.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 2,_180_nm)

For a DOS/98se rig an Athlon 1.1 should be pretty dang fast, doubt either OS will need more grunt than that to run just about anything of that period, trying to decide which GPU would suit it, I have a ATI 9600XT which would work nice or I could go for a Geforce 2 or Geforce 3, I also have a Voodoo5 5500 that I could throw in it. I don't have many ATI cards from that period to pick from but I was musing over if the bratty Fury MAXX would work in this board ...Ive heard that KT133 seems to get along with it. (Just remembered I have a 128bit Radeon 9250 stashed in a box somewhere)

This is the problem I think all retro collectors have .. too many choices for GPUs.

Yeah, that's a tough choice! Part of me is thinking Voodoo 5, because they are a fantastic match and according to wikipedia were released only two months apart (V5 in June of 2000, Athlon 1.1Ghz in August). Couple it with an Aureal Vortex 2 of some kind and you've got a fantastic Windows 9x system with Glide and A3D 2.0 support. If you throw in something like an ISA ESS audiodrive or maybe a different card with good FM and a good quality wavetable synth you'll have tons of options to tinker with, assuming you can get the resources sorted out. Also, I'd recommend some additional cooling if you go with a Voodoo 5, just to keep it happy.

If you didn't want to risk wearing out a card as rare and expensive as a Voodoo 5 you could use any of the other cards and probably have a similar or better experience with a Glide wrapper.

I have plans to do the Noctua mod to the Voodoo5 before using it again along with some nice copper heatsinks so this might be the perfect time to do that, good idea about using a Vortex card .. got a MX300 not being used and a ESS1869 with wavetable chip which should work alongside the Vortex nicely. ...I'm liking the feel of this rig already, might make it my first build post here on Vogons. Only thing missing is OPL3 ..I do have a nice Vibra16 that has a Wavetable header and real OPL3 in my spares box, throw the ESSWAVE card on that and it'll be a good fit I think.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-17, 05:00:

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doe […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 04:03:

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the ri […]
Show full quote

Got this Jetway 663AS Pro, been after a Socket A board with both ISA and Universal AGP for a while but never found one at the right price that didn't require me to recap the bastard. So when I spotted this one I threw the seller a offer for it and it was accepted, comes with a Athlon 1.1 Ghz and a chunky Spire cooler .. pretty sure its one of the Thunderbird models as it doesn't identify with the Athlon XP monkier. Board doesn't appear to be anything super special but the caps all look to be in good condition and aside from needing a clean the board itself is in good nick.

Figure with ISA and Uni AGP it would make for a really nice top end DOS/Win98se Box, appears its also using PC133 ram which will also work well for such a rig.

Jetway KT133.jpgJetway Post.jpgSpire Cooler.jpg

I believe there is a Ultra version of this board with the KT133A chipset .. not sure what the difference is between the chipsets but the two boards appear to be identical otherwise.

Nice board! Socket A boards with ISA are pretty uncommon in general, but like you said, it's even more rare to find one that doesn't have visibly bad caps.

Being that the board is a KT133, it is limited to 200Mhz FSB CPUs. The KT133A supports 266Mhz.

So, you will be somewhat limited on what chips you can use in it. If you wanted to upgrade you'd only be looking at 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4Ghz models with 200Mhz FSB, but I don't know how common they are. Personally, I'd just stick with the one that's in it unless you find something faster for cheap or already have one. The wattage of those chips creeps up really fast as the clock speed increases. I remember how toasty my old 1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird got.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 2,_180_nm)

I would try if Athlon XP 1800+ with Palomino core boots. They do underclock from 133-->100 FSB but it's still better option than 1.4ghz thunderbird 😁

Perhaps the least attractive packaging. But the black PCB compensates nicely.

Just a reminder to fellow forum goers who have a stash of Motherboards ..dont forget to give them a going over every now and again ...had to send a couple of old motherboards off to the great tech graveyard today. One was so bad that of the 2 dozen caps on the board more than half had either bloated or fully split open and leaked their shmoo.

Thankfully only one will be missed and that was the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, a nice socket 939 board which was the one with the most dead caps on it, normally I might recap but these are the small fiddly in tight places type of caps on a multi plane board so Ill replace it rather than try saving it.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 13:07:

normally I might recap but these are the small fiddly in tight places type of caps on a multi plane board so Ill replace it rather than try saving it.

And extra tedious because of that RoHS solder crap. That same board was in my second Athlon64 rig, being the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum in the first and still in possession. The first thing I did was replacing the northbridge fan with a blue Zalman heatsink (ZM-NB47J).

PD2JK wrote on 2023-02-17, 13:16:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 13:07:

normally I might recap but these are the small fiddly in tight places type of caps on a multi plane board so Ill replace it rather than try saving it.

And extra tedious because of that RoHS solder crap. That same board was in my second Athlon64 rig, being the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum in the first and still in possession. The first thing I did was replacing the northbridge fan with a blue Zalman heatsink (ZM-NB47J).

Bad Caps with an extra helping of super shit solder = eventually this board cant be saved.

The sad thing is that there are a lot of 939 boards of that age that will also fall afoul of shitty caps and RoHS solder and simply become too tedious to repair. Finding working 939 boards will eventually become as difficult as finding working dual Tualatin 370 boards.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-17, 13:07:

Just a reminder to fellow forum goers who have a stash of Motherboards ..dont forget to give them a going over every now and again ...had to send a couple of old motherboards off to the great tech graveyard today. One was so bad that of the 2 dozen caps on the board more than half had either bloated or fully split open and leaked their shmoo.

Thankfully only one will be missed and that was the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, a nice socket 939 board which was the one with the most dead caps on it, normally I might recap but these are the small fiddly in tight places type of caps on a multi plane board so Ill replace it rather than try saving it.

If the boards have value, you can always list this fault and pass it on to other collectors. I have no problem doing these kinds of repairs, there are certainly others who can as well.