I once had a 386 with an ISA Diamond SpeedStar64 and Windows 95. It ran 24-bit color at 800x600 very well.

The whole system went into the dumpster when I moved though. In retrospect, I should've kept that system and instead discarded some college textbooks since everything worth knowing is on Wikipedia now.

STX wrote:

The whole system went into the dumpster when I moved though. In retrospect, I should've kept that system and instead discarded some college textbooks since everything worth knowing is on Wikipedia now.

😎

Heh, I know the feeling. I've regretted getting rid of every single piece of hardware I've ever disposed of... even those stupid little OEM PCI modems. I now have a large cardboard crate that everything gets (gently) tossed into until I realize I have a use for it. 😀

I think I've found what I was looking for:
http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/v/vVESA_1.htm

I'm reading into the SpeedStar series right now... there seems to be quite a few of them still out there. I'll keep it in mind. If you want a good laugh, look at what this guy is asking for one... It really makes me mad when people either a) don't mark down their thirty year old hardware AT ALL, or b) mark it UP for no reason other than it being old, and throwing the two words "vintage" and "rare" onto it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Diamond-Speedstar-Pro … =item1c1da11fd3

Rant aside, I stumbled into this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MVGA-AlpineVL-vlb-vga … =item1e8404dc67
It's supposedly carrying 2MB onboard, but I see two empty sockets for what look to be expansion memory. I'll read into the data sheets on that card, if I can find any, and see if anything is still available for it... might be worth taking an interest in.

Also found the Matrox Ultima, the only example of which is selling for around $300. *sigh*

I think the best card you could ask for would be a S3 Trio64 VLB. These are very capable chips and should have the least headaches included.

Rant aside, I stumbled into this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MVGA-AlpineVL-v ... 1e8404dc67
It's supposedly carrying 2MB onboard, but I see two empty sockets for what look to be expansion memory. I'll read into the data sheets on that card, if I can find any, and see if anything is still available for it... might be worth taking an interest in.

That card only has 1MB on it. And the Cirrus 5430 isn't anything special anyway. It was basically a warmed-over 542x-series chip... not a terrible performer in absolute terms, but pretty lame compared to most of the other later-gen VLB chips. If you're gonna go for a Cirrus card, look for one with a 5434 (which could compete pretty well with the S3 and ATi offerings of the time).

The problem is that I don't have the slightest clue what I'm looking for... I hail from the Reva TNT2 generation; 486-generation video cards are beyond what I already know, so I'm here to learn. At this point, I'm just looking to take what I can find - there just aren't enough cards readily available to be picky about which chip is on it, at least from what I've seen. I'm really hoping for something that can do better than 256 colors at 1280x1024, but it's not looking good so far - I found this and this which both claim to do 1600x1200 resolution, but cards like that look to have long since disappeared.

I don't mind a bit of headache, 'long as it works in the end. Case in point: I'm running an AWE32 on Win2k Advanced Server with half of an NT4.0 driver, half of the Win95 driver, and with the AWE Control Panel smashed into there as well. Win2k doesn't even recognize it as a PnP card any more, and thinks my ISA modem is a SCSI controller due to something with Creative's IDE controller that never got disabled and was pulled into the mix; I've completely bent the operating system around this one piece of hardware just to get the AWE CP SoundFont loader to work. 😀 Point of the story is that as long there is any hope of getting something to work, I've got all the time in the world to make it happen. I just don't have the first clue what I need.

For me a 486 is really for DOS only. Any VLB card should do. A 486 won't enough performance for 3D/S-VGA games anyway.

For Windows you are much better of with a PCI or AGP based system like a Socket 7 Pentium or that Slot 1 motherboard you have.

You really need to think about what it is you want to do with your 486. My PC upgrade history as a kid was:

386DX-33 > 486DLC-40 > 486DX4-100 > Pentium 133 > Pentium 2-300

I don't remember doing anything in Windows with the 486. All I remember was that it was awesome for Doom, Duke 3D and Descent. I did have a VLB TSENG ET-4000 card because back in the day this card won all the DOS benchmarks in the magazines. It was a best under DOS.

In the Pentium I had a PCI S3 Trio 64 V+ because that was the card that PC Player (a magazine) recommended for gaming.

I put this up in the ebay thread and cant believe its still available.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Acronics-64-B … =item4d159d7377

That's a Cirrus Logic 5434 under the bonnet with 2meg of ram and you will not do better for $35... Keep in mind a bog standard ET4000 VLB does not have 2d acceleration so moving windows around or playing Solitaire under a windows environment will tax the cpu and may display jerkiness, with a 2d accelerator like this card those functions are performed by the graphics card and will be silky smooth, it will be good enough for all your dos gaming too

Worse case scenario its not 4meg but you may never find a well priced 4meg vlb card, 2meg is still good enough for 16bit colour at 1024x768.

The ET4000 to get is ET4000/W32p. That is the top model AFAIK and it does do GUI acceleration and is very nice in DOS. But I seem to remember it being annoying to configure the refresh rate in Windows 9x. I think I needed a DOS utility to do it? Maybe a non-issue with a 60Hz LCD though. I've used this chip on Diamond Stealth 32 and Hercules Dynamite Power.

Nothing wrong with Cirrus Logic but they are just the popular budget choice.

When it comes to GUI acceleration, I think the S3 Trio64 has the most advanced hardware on VLB. It also has some basic video acceleration. It is basically the next generation of the high-end S3 Vision series.

I'm really hoping for something that can do better than 256 colors at 1280x1024, but it's not looking good so far - I found this and this which both claim to do 1600x1200 resolution, but cards like that look to have long since disappeared.

You have to keep in mind, back in the 486 era, 1280x1024 was still considered high res, and 256 colors was pretty much the norm. And outside of some professional-class stuff, there wasn't much software that could really take much advantage of more than that.

About those two cards you linked, that Matrox one was aimed at high-end CAD systems, IIRC it wasn't far off of $2K when it was new. Not exactly a high-volume seller, so it's not really surprising that it's hard to find. Matrox also wasn't known for great DOS performance. The Trident card... yeah, it might technically be able to run 1600x1200, but those damn things could barely produce a clear picture even at 800x600. They're also kinda slow and the drivers are buggy as all hell. In other words, they live up to everything you should expect of the Trident brand.

Yeah asking for more than 1280x1024 is very tricky with VLB. I have no idea which cards would provide sharp output at that resolution. I don't think I ever ran a VLB card above 1024x768.

Definitely not anything from Trident of the mid'90s. I also doubt any Cirrus Logic cards were designed with that in mind. These were budget cards for 640x480-800x600 systems.

Yep... I've been doing a lot of reading into the matter and see now how much I'm asking of these cards. 1280x1024 would be fine... anything over that would be an added bonus. It's hard for someone with so little experience like myself to just go back through an archive of so many cards that were made with no references as to what they were actually aimed at. It's like trying to describe AMD's current few generations of cards to someone by nothing other than the name of the card's architecture.

I know that running Windows on a 486 isn't exactly a common thing to see, but then again, neither is still having a 486 in the first place. The next step back is going to be in the form of an IBM PS/2 Model 80 some day, but that's a long way off. Then I'll say goodbye to a GUI. Until then, though, the question really isn't why do I do it, but why not? I'm not concerned with performance so much as I am with just getting the thing running in the first place... Operating systems are a lot easier to flip around than motherboards, and I thought the 486 would be a good place to pick up what my late-Slot 1 hardware has already passed compatibility-wise.

I'll have to look into refresh rates in Win9x; never even noticed it when I've been using an FX5900SE for graphical power... it actually runs at 75Hz, which is a bit out of the ordinary, but nice nonetheless.

I'm going to make my rounds to the local brick-and-mortar shops and see if anything's been thrown their way in terms of junk/unwanted computers. I'll probably give eBay until Christmas or so to turn something up... robin4 here at Vogons seems to have found pretty much what I'm hoping to end up with, here, and although I don't know what was paid for that little pile, it was only a year ago, so they're still out there.
Please, don't mind my excessive linking to random things I run across... I tend to think out loud on the forums. 😐

Windows wasn't uncommon on 486s. Most 486s spent their time running Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95. This was the beginning of the age of not needing to know anything about DOS to use a store-bought PC.

Yes and Starcraft and diablo ran great on faster 486 and win95 😀
first i wanted the early pentium systems but they suck, 486 just as good if not better than early pentium 60, 66

This made me wonder, are there any Nvidia or Matrox ISA cards or still around?

Nvidia never made any ISA cards, or VLB for that matter. The old Matrox cards turn up once in awhile, but they're quite rare. Matrox didn't really break into the consumer market until the PCI Millennium and Mystique line... before that they just did high-end, low-volume stuff.

So basically all ISA VGA cards were low end in the first place.
Set aside maybe for ET4000 and Speedstar cards.

Yes. ISA ~ 8 MHz, PCI ~ 33 MHz, AGP ~ 66 MHz.

Yes but i mean when isa vga was introduced for 286 example when there was no such thing as vlb or pci yet.
They were already always low end and not concidere high end isa vga pwnage cards.

Not exactly. Pricing was spread out similar to today but today a low end card serves most users as well as a top end 3D card because they don't need the 3D. Back then you would get garbage at the low end and the high end GUI cards (or just more color depth and resolution) cost a lot of money and weren't exactly amazing by today's standards either.