Now that's what I call box art.

Awesome. Thanks for this.

Well did the Byte award come proactively? 😉

I forgot to mention, keep in mind the software only works if you have a TIGA card installed in your system.

As a side note, I'm searching for a TI-PC (Texas Instruments Professional Computer) to make a replica TIGA demo system. Does anyone know someone who has one?

dkarguth wrote:

I forgot to mention, keep in mind the software only works if you have a TIGA card installed in your system.

As a side note, I'm searching for a TI-PC (Texas Instruments Professional Computer) to make a replica TIGA demo system. Does anyone know someone who has one?

Not heard of that system before 😲 Looks like it predates TIGA, How does it support it?

I would like to know what PC compatible gfx have a TMS34020? I have yet to see one.

Thank you very much for images + scans! Unfortunately no time for testing at the moment...

The TIGA cards will work in any ISA based system, but TI used their TI-PCs for everything. My father said they were still all over the place in empty cubes until they remodeled the building a few years ago.
You'd think a company like TI would be all cutting edge on all their systems, but one of our family friends who is also a TI employee says the chip production facilities are still largely run by DEC VAXs and PDP 11s.

The TI-PC is a pretty generic 8088 class system. There isn't anything especially unique about it other than it's by TI. I thought about trying to get a booth at VCF sometime and have a TIGA history exhibit, complete with the promotional software running on a TIGA installed in the TI-PC. Those computers would have been what TI used to demo the card when they were advertising it.

Also, does the TIGA support a light pen? I kept seeing 'pen' mentioned in the manual and didn't know if it was referring to a physical light pen or a software drawing tool called 'pen'.

dkarguth wrote:

Also, does the TIGA support a light pen? I kept seeing 'pen' mentioned in the manual and didn't know if it was referring to a physical light pen or a software drawing tool called 'pen'.

I don't think light pens have anything to do with the graphics card. They rely on CRT scanlines, so are gfx agnostic. I suspect it's a type of drawing function in the TIGA api, like a "brush" but behaves differently. Probably give it a colour and width/size and then plot it.

Found it: See http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spvu015c/spvu015c.pdf page 5-56.

spiroyster wrote:

I would like to know what PC compatible gfx have a TMS34020? I have yet to see one.

There were a few with the 34010, less so with the 34020 - two I can think of offhand were the #9 GXiTC and the Hercules SuperStation 3D (which also sported an Intel i860).

TI demo of the 34010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=730tmDmzeDE

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote:

spiroyster wrote:

I would like to know what PC compatible gfx have a TMS34020? I have yet to see one.

There were a few with the 34010, less so with the 34020 - two I can think of offhand were the #9 GXiTC and the Hercules SuperStation 3D (which also sported an Intel i860).

TI demo of the 34010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=730tmDmzeDE

Interesting! elianda has one of those #9 cards working. ISA based 3D accelerators?. I didn't realise it was a '20.

So while the IrisVision is considered the first 'dedicated' 3D accelerator, this is only because it was dedicated 3D using a dedicated API (IrisGL) and pipeline. However the TMM340XX, while not 'dedicated' to 3D, could actually accelerate 3D operations due its fully programmable nature, and predates IrisVision? It must be one of the first (if not the first) GPU chipset ever!

Time to brush the dust of my PG-1281 and re-attempt to get it working.

I'll have to see what TIGA card my father's friend digs up for me. It's likely a TI made model, as he was provided a couple by TI while he was writing software for it. Who knows, perhaps its a pre-production prototype or something!