How many times have we been through this now? Somebody please make this a sticky.

Any 256k x 16 fast page mode DRAM chip with 70ns access time or moderately better (e.g. 60ns, 50ns) in 40-pin SOJ package should work. In a short test search, "256k x 16 soj dram" provides good results on ebay or aliexpress. I can't vouch for the quality of parts bought of ebay or aliexpress, on the other hand it's difficult to find chips like that at reputable electronics retailers, because the 40-pin SOJ package is considered obsolete.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-12-18, 00:13:

Any 256k x 16 fast page mode DRAM chip with 70ns access time or moderately better (e.g. 60ns, 50ns) in 40-pin SOJ package should work. In a short test search, "256k x 16 soj dram" provides good results on ebay or aliexpress. I can't vouch for the quality of parts bought of ebay or aliexpress, on the other hand it's difficult to find chips like that at reputable electronics retailers, because the 40-pin SOJ package is considered obsolete.

Thank you!

So nobody is going to explain to him that upgrading a CL GD542x card to 2MB is beyond pointless?
It's a 1MB design that had a second MB bolted on for marketting reasons.
I'm surprised they even bothered to hook up the traces.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-12-18, 01:27:

So nobody is going to explain to him that upgrading a CL GD542x card to 2MB is beyond pointless?
It's a 1MB design that had a second MB bolted on for marketting reasons.
I'm surprised they even bothered to hook up the traces.

It's not pointless if I want to be able to use the 1024x768x64K mode for image viewing under DOS. I already do that my 386DX/40 system with a CL-GD5429 2MB ISA video card. Which is why I asked about the memory upgrade in the first place.

As we went into the 2nd half of the 90s, I was wanting high color at 1024x768 so webpages didn't look all dithered and shitty. So yah, I had the "useless" upgrade in mine at the time.

So you were one of the poor souls that suffered with interlaced graphics? 1024x768 NON-interlaced at 60Hz is already bad enough. I'd rather fall back to 800x600 than go blind.
You didn't really need 1024x768 in the 90s for web browsing anyway.

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-12-18, 03:32:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-12-18, 01:27:

So nobody is going to explain to him that upgrading a CL GD542x card to 2MB is beyond pointless?
It's a 1MB design that had a second MB bolted on for marketting reasons.
I'm surprised they even bothered to hook up the traces.

It's not pointless if I want to be able to use the 1024x768x64K mode for image viewing under DOS. I already do that my 386DX/40 system with a CL-GD5429 2MB ISA video card. Which is why I asked about the memory upgrade in the first place.

I had that "pointless" upgrade on my VLB CL-GD5429 card as well, AFAICR . This was my last VLB card.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-12-18, 05:07:

So you were one of the poor souls that suffered with interlaced graphics? I'd rather fall back to 800x600 than go blind. 1024x768 interlaced at 60Hz is already bad enough.
You didn't really need 1024x768 in the 90s for web browsing anyway.

You also got 800x600 in 24-bit color out of having 2MB .

It might depend on the drivers. It's been a while, but I don't recall being able to get 800x600 at 16.7 million colours working in NT4 on my 5429 with 2MB.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-12-18, 05:07:

So you were one of the poor souls that suffered with interlaced graphics? 1024x768 NON-interlaced at 60Hz is already bad enough. I'd rather fall back to 800x600 than go blind.
You didn't really need 1024x768 in the 90s for web browsing anyway.

I had finally scored a half decent 15" monitor, a TTX IIRC, did up to 1280x1024, but that was flickery, 1024x768 was very crisp and stable. Picture was edge to edge and it's might have been a tad over 15"... a number of 17" I tried after that one disappointed me.

These were the couple of golden years where you didn't "need" any particular resolution because forced formatting wasn't happening yet. i.e. it wasn't all in a left side column because you were supposed to be using 800x600.

I found some NOS 256K x 16 SOJ 40-pin 35ns memory on eBay for $4 for a lot of 2. The part # is ISSI IS41C16256-35K . I am getting 2 lots and will put totally new memory on the video card.

If you use RAM that fast (actually, 50ns is fast enough for the 5429), get a tool to set the memory clock to 60 MHz (setting it higher would be overclocking the memory interface of the 5429, which you would likely don't need). I recently experimented with changing the memory clock on 5429 cards, and found out that the increase from 50 to 60 MHz shows a significant performance increase at 40 MHz VL clock. See Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards for details.

null

1024x768i is beyond useless

1024x768p60 is great and what I use on all my retro ISA Windows 3.x builds (when I can't get 1600x1200p60 due to video card limitations)

mkarcher wrote on 2021-12-18, 18:01:

If you use RAM that fast (actually, 50ns is fast enough for the 5429), get a tool to set the memory clock to 60 MHz (setting it higher would be overclocking the memory interface of the 5429, which you would likely don't need). I recently experimented with changing the memory clock on 5429 cards, and found out that the increase from 50 to 60 MHz shows a significant performance increase at 40 MHz VL clock. See Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards for details.

I already have the MC LK utility to adjust memory speed on my 5429 2MB ISA card with 50ns ram. I run that at 60MHz.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-12-18, 19:00:

1024x768i is beyond useless

1024x768p60 is great and what I use on all my retro ISA Windows 3.x builds (when I can't get 1600x1200p60 due to video card limitations)

In my experience, that highly depends on the monitor type, most likely the persistence of the phosphor, and maybe the overall sharpness and the dot pitch. I've seen setups where 1024x768i is perfectly usable unless that pesky 50% dithering pattern is displayed, and I generally consider 60 Hz on monitors without notable persistence to be annoying to terrible. If a CRT-based monitor supports 1024x768p60, it usually also supports 800x600 at 70, 72 or 75 Hz, and I'd rather have flicker-free 800x600 than 1024x768 at 60Hz.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed MDA monitors in the 80s. Well, I didn't enjoy their prone-ness to burn-in, but I enjoyed the sharp and flicker-free display of text and hercules graphics. Their medium-persistence phosphor makes the 50Hz refresh rate enjoyable. Yet, I ditched the idea of using a "sync-to-anything" TTL/analog monitor with short-persistence phosphor on MDA timings after trying it once, even though it syncs perfectly on them.

Anders- wrote on 2021-12-18, 18:15:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-12-18, 05:15:

It might depend on the drivers. It's been a while, but I don't recall being able to get 800x600 at 16.7 million colours working in NT4 on my 5429 with 2MB.

Yep, depends on driver. The stock ones don't allow truecolor at 800x600.

Truecolor at 800x600 is not in the Cirrus Datasheet (but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't work). But as I understnad it, the only DAC mode that supports truecolor needs the video clock to be three times the dot clock. The video clock is limited to 86MHz (although the factory testing tool mentioned in the Cirrus Datasheet seems to allow video clocks up to 95MHz, probably to test the margin). This limits the dot clock in true color modes (without overclocking) to 28.6MHz, which isn't really up to the job of displaying 800x600 at a usable refresh rate. For comparison: Standard VGA uses 28.3MHz for 720x400 at 70Hz. Cheap SVGA runs 800x600 at 56Hz using a dot clock of 36MHz.
The datasheet lists a DAC mode that runs 16bpp at the dot clock rate as the video clock input. I tried in vein finding out the limiting factor in that mode preventing you from obtaining 1024x768x64K non-interlaced, but I guess it's about required memory bandwidth and this the 60MHz maximum memory clock likely puts a limit below 86MHz on the video clock in this mode. To reach standard XGA 1024x768i timing, you need a dot clock of 44.9MHz, so if you needed to double the video clock, it would be just out-of-spec. Thus guess 1024x768x64K runs at 1:1 video clock.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-12-18, 20:04:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-12-18, 19:00:

1024x768i is beyond useless

1024x768p60 is great and what I use on all my retro ISA Windows 3.x builds (when I can't get 1600x1200p60 due to video card limitations)

In my experience, that highly depends on the monitor type, most likely the persistence of the phosphor, and maybe the overall sharpness and the dot pitch. I've seen setups where 1024x768i is perfectly usable unless that pesky 50% dithering pattern is displayed, and I generally consider 60 Hz on monitors without notable persistence to be annoying to terrible. If a CRT-based monitor supports 1024x768p60, it usually also supports 800x600 at 70, 72 or 75 Hz, and I'd rather have flicker-free 800x600 than 1024x768 at 60Hz.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed MDA monitors in the 80s. Well, I didn't enjoy their prone-ness to burn-in, but I enjoyed the sharp and flicker-free display of text and hercules graphics. Their medium-persistence phosphor makes the 50Hz refresh rate enjoyable. Yet, I ditched the idea of using a "sync-to-anything" TTL/analog monitor with short-persistence phosphor on MDA timings after trying it once, even though it syncs perfectly on them.

I use 60Hz on every display I own. Literally do not care about going any higher it makes no difference to me