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Trying to choose an ISA video card...
If memory serves, Cirrus Logic 5428 and ET4000AX are top contenders.

Your best bet is probably going to be the Tseng Labs ET4000.

Speed star 24x gets my vote. Avoid Oak and Trident.

Trident cards get a bad rap because their VLB offerings were so awful, but the ISA implementations I've tried have great image quality / CGA modes / compatibility. They are slow but a 386 33 ain't no rocket anyway!

ET4000AX cards are fast and generally produce a nice image, but I've been using a Cirrus Logic based card in my 386 and loving on it.

Yea the CL cards are great value, just a tiny bit slower than WD and ET4000. The ET4000 I had, it doesn't work anymore, was just as fast as the WD card. But the WD card had better VESA support. Not an issue on a 386, but still nice to have 😀

With the Trident cards it depends a bit on the model. Older ones are very slow. The newest one I have is a TVGA9000 model and it can be up to half the speed of a WD on a faster machine (486). I had some 386 graphs, but they went down with imageshack recently, so I don't have the 386 figures anymore I'm afraid.

The CGA info is great, I have no experience with this!

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Speed star 24x gets my vote. Avoid Oak and Trident.

Late tridents (like the 9000i) are fine. They're more then fine actually. If you find a 1mb trident 9000i, go with it.

This would be my top for ISA VGA cards:

1. Western Digital WDC Paradise W90C3x (ex W90C33)
2. Tseng ET4000AX
3. Cirrus Logic 54xx (ex CL-GD5424)
4. Trident T9000i (the 8900D with EDO dram isn't bad either).

Yea it's a TGA9000I-3, ISA card. I have a VLB card with the TGUI9400CXI, now that card is much more competitive.

You guys are right about the WDC Paradise cards, I have an ISA WDC in my 286 (also has great CGA support!) and a VLB WDC in my 486. Rock solid and a beautiful image on both.

ET4000AX is badass. Tseng really made their name on the ISA bus.

Wow, thanks for all the response and info! I will check E-Bay and see what I can find at a decent price. If anyone locates a good deal on E-Bay for a card I am looking for, please don't hesitate to post a link here. I just wish people wouldn't ask such outrageous prices for shipping. Thanks again!

PS: Are the Forex boards considered decent?

Tommaso

Tommaso72 wrote:

PS: Are the Forex boards considered decent?

Don't know. Why don't you run a few benchmarks on your system and let us know the results.
If possible try to push it to the limit. I am curious to see if it will accept 256kb cache, 32MB RAM and a Cyrix DLC.

Tommaso72 wrote:

PS: Are the Forex boards considered decent?

Tommaso

I have this 386 board with Forex chipset:

With BIOS tweaking (and 256KB cache) it's 3rd fastest in my collection (1st is VLB based 386) and I have around 25 386 boards 😉

Manual is here.

Diamond Speedstar 24x with WD Chipset, fastest Video Card ISA in 320x200.

This is the link to the MB I purchased on EBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/232056207413?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I will run numerous tests when I get it up and running and post the results. I now just need an ATX adapter or AT power supply and video card.

Tommaso