Varka wrote:

As I recall those were TERRIBLE video cards for MS-DOS gaming.

🤣 Oh OK! However, if you look at this (the low res column in the first table), the Mach32 appears about half way up, so I reckon there are worse cards to have.

retro games 100 wrote:

Varka wrote:

As I recall those were TERRIBLE video cards for MS-DOS gaming.

🤣 Oh OK! However, if you look at this (the low res column in the first table), the Mach32 appears about half way up, so I reckon there are worse cards to have.

Thanks for the information. The information available here at VOGONS never gets old!

Picked up an ATI Mach 32 with 2MB of 45ns vram and the upgrad RAMDAC chip. Hopefully this will perform as the benchmarks suggest as my current Cirrus Logic 1MB 5426 card leaves a bit to be desired. Matching with a 486DX2 66.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it was only the VRAM version of Mach32 that was slow in DOS (but very nice in Windows).

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it was only the VRAM version of Mach32 that was slow in DOS (but very nice in Windows).

Your killing me. 🤣

Not being an expert on VLB graphic cards- I copied this from the Wiki:

The Mach 32 chip was used on the following ATI products:

Graphics Wonder (DRAM)
Graphics Ultra + (DRAM, fast RAMDAC)
Graphics Ultra CLX (DRAM, cost-reduced OEM version)
Graphics Ultra Pro (VRAM)
Graphics Ultra XLR (VRAM, cost-reduced OEM version)

Interesting performance Benchmark performed by PC Mag for Windows performance can be found here. They state that the ISA version of the Graphics Ultra Pro was a disappointment, but that the VLB flavor was quite good.

I will look around some more, but so far- I don't find anything anywhere discussing an issue in DOS and since this card is a 1993 manufacture date- DOS was still king. I would have expected much ado if the card was a flop in the primary OS of the day? Can you point me in the right direction to learn more about potential issues in DOS gaming? Thanks.

Also came across this interesting tidbit:

Like I said, I have been looking, but not been able to locate derogatory performance reviews for DOS. Any information is appreciated. Although I admit, It is like closing the barn door after the horse it out at this point since the card is already on it's way! 😊

You can just run the benchmarks yourself and compare. 3Dbench and DOOM would likely be enough to tell you if your card is competitive with other VLB cards.

groups.google.com tells me that it was quite a good card for DOS gaming, apparantly.

I'm not sure which video card I am remembering, but I got around 6fps in Doom which was really bad; windows ran great though.

I did some research, I think it may have been a Diamond Viper VLB card I had problems with; apparantly it had an Oak VGA chip that slowed DOS down dramatically...

*edit*

Yes, it was absolutely a Diamond Viper card. I even found a usenet post from myself complaining about it, how's that for a blast from the past? OTI-087 vga chip, which is basically the worst ever.

Some Viper VLB cards used a Weitek 5186 for the VGA core. I still haven't found any info on this chip indicating its any faster in DOS then the OTI-087. The card itself had enough problems, the worst being the broken VBE support in the BIOS that required a TSR to function correctly.

keenerb wrote:

groups.google.com tells me that it was quite a good card for DOS gaming, apparantly.

That is the same that I have found. I will know soon enough, but I am thinking that the ATI (and this is a true ATI card) Mach32 with 2MB ram will be strong in both DOS and Windows. Should perform identical as the Mach64 since with 2my it equals the throughput.

NJRoadfan wrote:

Some Viper VLB cards used a Weitek 5186 for the VGA core. I still haven't found any info on this chip indicating its any faster in DOS then the OTI-087. The card itself had enough problems, the worst being the broken VBE support in the BIOS that required a TSR to function correctly.

This could explain the confusion regarding the card's performance in DOS. Sometimes it is hard to remember experiences from long ago but I have done my research and look forward to putting this one to the test. I will update the thread with the results once it arrives and I get it installed, etc.

Thanks to you both for the added information!

I had a VLB mach32 card when they were new, a Graphics Wonder, if I remember correctly. For most DOS tasks, even my lower-end unit was quite decent, though it started to slow down if you exceeded 640x480 with more than 8-bit colour.

I ordered a tube of TC524258BZ-80 TOSHIBA 28 PIN ZIP 256Kx4 chips for an old MACH32 Vram card. Hope it works.

I've gathered that the ATI 68875 ramdac may be compatible with a TI TLC 34076-135FN -- http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/GUP.html

I can't find any affordable version of those, but I see some TI TLC34058-135FN ramdacs for sale. How can I tell if they are pin compatible?

douglar wrote on 2020-09-23, 21:19:

I ordered a tube of TC524258BZ-80 TOSHIBA 28 PIN ZIP 256Kx4 chips for an old MACH32 Vram card. Hope it works.

I've gathered that the ATI 68875 ramdac may be compatible with a TI TLC 34076-135FN -- http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/GUP.html

I can't find any affordable version of those, but I see some TI TLC34058-135FN ramdacs for sale. How can I tell if they are pin compatible?

How did you get on with the ram update? I've had an old Gateway 2000 DX266V for years that I'm restoring and my Mach32 VLB is of the 1mb variety.

Ram upgrade was super easy, barely an inconvenience. Just took a half second to figure out where the 1 pins were. That all works great. However there's limits to how useful it is without the faster ramdac, and the ramdac upgrade is more problematic.

I got an affordable TLC34075-135AFN TI PLCC-84 off ebay. It was easy enough to align and insert. When I remove J6, HWinfo says the the card has a ATI688875 ramdac and it does the high refresh rates, but ...

The picture is a strange double image, sometimes tinted purple. The palette on games like doom is unpredictable. Sometimes almost correct. Other times lots of pinks and other junk. At higher resolutions, the colors are shifted differently. Messed around with the utilities and couldn't find anything to fix it. I have a 1993-5-20 bios on my card, which is on the newer side. My card is ATI MACH32 VLB, P/N 113-19509-100 according to the BIOS dump.

Thanks for the reply, I'm just starting out with this machine. I'll get a full idea what sort of Mach32 I've got though it looks like (from the BIOS at bootup) it's P/N 113-19500-100.

*Edit* chip shot attached.

Kar wrote on 2020-10-27, 16:11:

Thanks for the reply, I'm just starting out with this machine. I'll get a full idea what sort of Mach32 I've got though it looks like (from the BIOS at bootup) it's P/N 113-19500-100.

Looks like you got the ramdac but only 1 DIP 28 chip there.

P/N 113-19500-100 = EXM195 = Graphics Ultra Pro yes?

Mine is EXM195a. Here's a pick with ram upgrade and not really compatible ramdac.

Looks like mine has an EEPROM that let's me save refresh rates, etc. Does yours do that?

Sorry for the delayed reply here - that second dip socket (the one you have, and mine is missing) is the original RAMDAC. You've put your new one in there, so you could try removing it and see if that stops the strange behaviour?

A full shot of my card is attached, note my empty socket above the bios and below the full ramdac.

Kar wrote on 2020-11-05, 18:12:

Sorry for the delayed reply here - that second dip socket (the one you have, and mine is missing) is the original RAMDAC. You've put your new one in there, so you could try removing it and see if that stops the strange behaviour?

A full shot of my card is attached, note my empty socket above the bios and below the full ramdac.

Thanks for the photo. any idea what that empty socket is for?

My strange video behavior goes away if I short jumper J6, which disabled the external ramdac and enabled the onboard ramdac. I verified this using HWInfo. When J6 is shorted, it is using the slower on chip 80mhz 68830 ramdac.

I installed a TLC34076-135FN TI PLCC-84 to see if that made a difference, but I got the same behavior.

http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/video/ATI_GUP.html
RAMDAC Older boards use an ATI 68875 CFN, newer ones use a TI TLC 34076-135FN. The TI chip responds as an ATI 68875 under the install program and other diagnostic applications

He was right though. Both chips report themselves as a ATI 68875 CFN under HWinfo.

Seems like I need to track down an honest to goodness 68875 ramdac to make this work.

Trying to find a site that had a nice breakdown of all the parts on the Graphics Ultra Pro that specifically labelled that empty socket.

One other thing to note, it's interesting that the earlier revisions of the GUP have fewer traces on the VLB connector, note mine is missing a bunch compared to yours. And other pictures of the EXM195 seem similar, your EXM195-A has all the traces present.

Looking at the board diagram at http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/video/ATI_GUP.html, it would appear to be for odd/even bios addresses.

Look at U17/18.

Perhaps the earlier revisions didn't need that since they only had the one RAMDAC the newer ones had to support two types?