Pretty sure it's for the Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio. https://www.matrox.com/graphics/media/pdf/sup … als/en_rrst.pdf

The external DB25 connector is used by the Rainbow Runner Studio, as ifrit05 already said. It's for a breakout-cable.

As the two before me have said, it's for the VIVO breakout cable used by the Rainbow Runner daughterboard. Below is a pic of my Mystique 220 W/Rainbow Runner card and the breakout cable in question.

And the Rainbow Runner detached from the card

I also have a Mystique with a Rainbow Runner daughterboard, but lack that breakout cable. Is there a pinout for that?

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-06, 10:18:

I also have a Mystique with a Rainbow Runner daughterboard, but lack that breakout cable. Is there a pinout for that?

Not that I'm aware of.

You'd think that after all this time maybe Matrox would have published it 'cause they're definitely not going to profit from anything related to the Mystique or RR in this day and age.

Rainbow Runner Studio, not Rainbow Runner. These are two different products. There's no breakout cable for the Rainbow Runner.

Rainbow Runner is an MPEG decoder only, whereas Rainbow Runner Studio is also an a/v capture device which requires a breakout cable to provide a/v in- and outputs. Many websites don't seem to distinguish between the two.

https://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_matrox_my … nnerstudio.html

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-07, 16:17:

Rainbow Runner Studio, not Rainbow Runner. These are two different products. There's no breakout cable for the Rainbow Runner.

Rainbow Runner is an MPEG decoder only, whereas Rainbow Runner Studio is also an a/v capture device which requires a breakout cable to provide a/v in- and outputs. Many websites don't seem to distinguish between the two.

https://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_matrox_my … nnerstudio.html

Ahhh, I do not have the Studio, just the regular runner I think.

Hi all,
I'm new here.
You'll probably find this hard to believe, but I have a Mystique running on my Windows 10 desktop, and it actually runs better than the built in Intel 915G. It's using Windows VGA drivers and DirectX 9. I just slapped it in, and it worked, right off the bat. I only have PCI slots in this computer (Dimension 3100) so had to rumage though my old cards to find something that would work better than the Intel.
I have since removed the Rainbow Runner from my MY220P, since it wasn't working, and have put it onto the Mystique. It seems to run fine; but I'm wondering if the runner will add any improvements to the Mystique's graphics.
Thanks,
...... john

It is not that your Mystique is doing anything, it is Windows 10 video emulation working around it.

Putas wrote on 2021-01-29, 04:31:

It is not that your Mystique is doing anything, it is Windows 10 video emulation working around it.

I was just going to post this, the whole acceleration is being done in Software and your Mystique is just outputting a video buffer.

Does a K6-2/350CXT need the "RainbowRunner" card to play MPEG Video better with MGA Mystique 220 4MB ?
The rainbowrunner addon card does accelerate mpeg1 but not mpeg2 (DVD) so how important is such a card if the main CPU is about 350Mhz and above.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2024-01-10, 21:52:

Does a K6-2/350CXT need the "RainbowRunner" card to play MPEG Video better with MGA Mystique 220 4MB ?
The rainbowrunner addon card does accelerate mpeg1 but not mpeg2 (DVD) so how important is such a card if the main CPU is about 350Mhz and above.

If memory serves me right I remember playing MPEG2 without hardware decoding being pretty painful pre-Deschutes. Honestly, looking back even Dell put in MPEG2 decodes in their Latitude XPS D333 PCs which were basically top of the top of the line for consumer prebuilts at the time. You'd think they would cut a corner with that for price if it wasn't necessary.. I'd say a lower end K6-2, being significantly slower than a Klamath, would need MPEG2 decoding in hardware to properly playback DVDs..

If we are talking about a video CD compatible MPEG-1 constrained parameter bitstream (352x240/352x288 at 30 or 25 or 24 fps , etc) , even a Pentium 1 could handle that with ease, maybe even a 60 MHz Pentium 1. I remember that my old Pentium 1 @ 150 MHz had no issues doing it in software with the video card doing only scaling (stretching to full screen) and possibly colorspace conversion in the graphics card's hardware.

The hardware scaling and colorspace conversion, which pretty much all cards handled past 1995ish or so, was significant, because a software decompressed MPEG-1 video CD stream, in its native YCbCr at 4:2:0 subsampling was about 3.6Megabytes per second to push over the PCI bus into the video card IF the video card supported conversion to RGB and scaling in hardware. If the video card did not support scaling and RGB conversion in hardware (or if one did not use it), pushing the same VCD video stream with full software processing to a fullscreen 640x480 24-bit desktop would require 26Megabytes per second (800x600 would be 50% more bandwidth) . PCI bus implementations of that era were quite compromised AND video card designs had relatively limited internal and/or external bus constraints.

At the time I remember that a couple of people around me had these kind of dedicated MPEG2 decoding cards: http://www.digivision.it/docs/hollywoodplus.html
It was the only way to have a decent DVD-decoding experience.

I can't upgrade the CPU beside some clocking, I can't change the gfx-card (PCI MGA Mystique 4MB).
What I can do is upgrading that mystique with rainbow-runner, question is, does it improve things?

currently power-dvd 1.2 runs good on win95b for video-cd. I have to do some more testing, especially
how much cpu-power is drawn to the decoding... the rainbow-runner is MPEG1 not MPEG2 so no DVD
and no SVCD support. I don't think that hardware MPEG1 support does anything for DVD/sVCDplayback.

edit:
- there is no free slot in that machine to add an mpeg2 decoder.
- the onboard rageIIc is deactivated because it's even slower than the mystique and currently not support in amithlon which is essential to me.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2024-01-11, 12:59:

I can't upgrade the CPU beside some clocking, I can't change the gfx-card (PCI MGA Mystique 4MB). What I can do is upgrading tha […]
Show full quote

I can't upgrade the CPU beside some clocking, I can't change the gfx-card (PCI MGA Mystique 4MB).
What I can do is upgrading that mystique with rainbow-runner, question is, does it improve things?

currently power-dvd 1.2 runs good on win95b for video-cd. I have to do some more testing, especially
how much cpu-power is drawn to the decoding... the rainbow-runner is MPEG1 not MPEG2 so no DVD
and no SVCD support. I don't think that hardware MPEG1 support does anything for DVD/sVCDplayback.

edit:
- there is no free slot in that machine to add an mpeg2 decoder.
- the onboard rageIIc is deactivated because it's even slower than the mystique and currently not support in amithlon which is essential to me.

Rainbow Runner is MPEG1 only acceleration it will not help with DVD decoding (IIRC).

You need to find a PCI DVD/MPEG2 decoder card to accelerate that.

Regarding that 26?pin port... does anyone have a link to the pinout ?

I recently came across a siemens D1025 which had a rainbow runner card rattling in the case, and another PCI card nearby with a tuner and a 26 pin D-connector attached via an IDC connector. Luckily on top of this all was a 26 pin D-connector with a bunch of connectors and also a scart connector attached. I could measure this and post the pinout. I'm curious though if anyone else has a link to compare it to.

The d1025 mainboard is working, after adding the electrolytics back on since someone removed them which caused the board to boot and then crash.
I haven't tested the rainbow card nor the pci tuner card yet.
The thing that was missing from this all was the ISA/PCI riser that the mainboard uses. slightly frustrating.

My recollections are that you needed about P-133 to guarantee smooth MPEG1 playback with no hardware support. With full decoders it could be done on fast 386, with halfass acceleration, scaling support etc, you could just do it on a hotrod 486 100Mhz+.

For MPEG2, there was a bit of a hump in software support in that the software was about 25% slower in first couple of years then got optimisations and sped up a bit, so you could probably get a PII 300 doing it okay now where it wouldn't quite do it when new. Same kind of thing for MPEG1 software too, might have jumped ahead with pentium optimisations. Anyway, K6 class can manage it somewhere in the 300-400 range usually, but depends on bus speed and setup. Hardware support varies, I think a full separate decoder would have you doing good on a P-133 again, whereas inbuilt to graphics card, Rage II, Sis6326 etc decoders might have had you needing 200Mhz to pull it off.

weedeewee wrote on 2024-01-11, 16:52:

Regarding that 26?pin port... does anyone have a link to the pinout ? […]
Show full quote

Regarding that 26?pin port... does anyone have a link to the pinout ?

I recently came across a siemens D1025 which had a rainbow runner card rattling in the case, and another PCI card nearby with a tuner and a 26 pin D-connector attached via an IDC connector. Luckily on top of this all was a 26 pin D-connector with a bunch of connectors and also a scart connector attached. I could measure this and post the pinout. I'm curious though if anyone else has a link to compare it to.

The d1025 mainboard is working, after adding the electrolytics back on since someone removed them which caused the board to boot and then crash.
I haven't tested the rainbow card nor the pci tuner card yet.
The thing that was missing from this all was the ISA/PCI riser that the mainboard uses. slightly frustrating.

something like this? (FSC-C5 (233mmx) D1025 onboard mystique 2MB + Rainbow-Runner on top of the mainboard.