Thanks, I should really update the first post. Keep us posted on how your build turns out.

I usually buy from a seller on EBay who sells them as a pre-tested kit. You spend a bit more but I’ve never had a bad module yet. You can also make him an offer for $5 or so less than he’s asking and will usually accept. Just search for “ 1MB 15ns Cache SRAM Kit for 486”.

Chadti99 wrote on 2021-11-21, 19:01:

Thanks, I should really update the first post. Keep us posted on how your build turns out.

I usually buy from a seller on EBay who sells them as a pre-tested kit. You spend a bit more but I’ve never had a bad module yet. You can also make him an offer for $5 or so less than he’s asking and will usually accept. Just search for “ 1MB 15ns Cache SRAM Kit for 486”.

I hope that I can complete it before the end of this year, or at least make it good enough to create a thread here with some more photos of it.

Most of it is pretty much done but upgrading from 128k L2 cache is something that has been on my todo-list way to long now. I will try to find a complete kit with tag-ram and cache 😀

The Win Pro Turbo still eludes me but I did manage to pick this guy up. He’s getting 17.8fps vs the ARK1000’s 18.2 in Phil’s Quake bench, on my setup with AM5x86@160MHz. With all these chips you’d think this thing was 4MB but nope, just 2MB. Any idea what the jumpers do, maybe the memory could be upgraded?

It appears to run 1152x864 in High Color 16-bit mode but the refresh maxes out at 60Hz. I took a guess at the correct Windows 98 driver being (ATIM64 -CT) assuming CT stands for thr Chrontel DAC on this card. If I select anything higher I lose sync. A bit of a shame as it remains crisp at that resolution and 70Hz refresh at 256 colors.

the only jumpers I see are labeled IRQ 2 3 5 , so seems clear, since 2 => 9 vga irq blub

nice card anyway. 😀

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-05, 18:39:

the only jumpers I see are labeled IRQ 2 3 5 , so seems clear, since 2 => 9 vga irq blub

nice card anyway. 😀

Yep makes sense!

That card matches the name of the thread.
Are you going with it for the build, or sticking to Ark1000 or S3 Trio ?

Lol for sure, I think I’ll stick with the Ark1000 for that pure dos speed.

@pshipkov Was finally able to duplicate your results in Quake on the same hardware, the difference seems to be the version of DOS I was using, turns out that 6.22 is quicker, thanks for sending those images over!

And in this instance, AT Bus Clock set to 1/2 seems to land the 27.3 score more consistently, opposed to 1/3.

Excellent. Glad to see the parity.
So are you going POD100 or DX5 for the VLB computer ?

On a related note - was thinking to de-lid one of the P24T processors here and see if freezing it Peltier will allow 125MHz - that will be awesome.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-03-13, 22:48:

Excellent. Glad to see the parity.
So are you going POD100 or DX5 for the VLB computer ?

On a related note - was thinking to de-lid one of the P24T processors here and see if freezing it Peltier will allow 125MHz - that will be awesome.

Probably POD100 for now, would love for someone to attempt a 125MHz overclock!

got a bunch more new VLB cards to sift through. there's an ARK and a ET4000W32 in there anyway. the tseng cards are getting ridiculously rare to find.

libby wrote on 2022-03-25, 03:55:

vlb3.png

got a bunch more new VLB cards to sift through. there's an ARK and a ET4000W32 in there anyway. the tseng cards are getting ridiculously rare to find.

Nice haul! Let us know if any stand out.

Latest VLB get! Love the looks of this one, especially the trace path leading to the VGA out, and maybe my first Number Nine card. Ticket To Ride! Lol.

Does 16-bit color max out at 1024x768 on this chipset?

N9 had an eye for aesthetics.
Let's bench that boy to see if perf matches look.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-05-07, 16:52:

N9 had an eye for aesthetics.
Let's bench that boy to see if perf matches look.

Def, I’ll report back.

It will be interesting to see how it stacks against S3 Trio64 in DOS and Windows.

Chadti99 wrote on 2022-05-07, 16:15:

Latest VLB get! Love the looks of this one, especially the trace path leading to the VGA out, and maybe my first Number Nine card. Ticket To Ride! Lol.

Does 16-bit color max out at 1024x768 on this chipset?

Yes, if the card has 2MB RAM installed.

The chip installed on that Number Nine card is the S3 Vision868, the predecessor of the more popular Trio64 family.

The Vision868 should have the same speed in general like the Vision864 (at same clocks). The Vision868 has an added partial video acceleration (color space conversion and Video scaling and filtering). The Trio64 is a higher clocked Vision864 with included 135MHz DAC, the Trio64V+ is a higher clocked Vision868 with included 135MHz DAC.
But the scaling performance of the Vision868 ist very limited because of the DRAM speed limitations. So the VRAM Variant (Vision968) has a much faster video acceleration.

Your #9 Motion 531 is a nice and rare card, congratulations! The Vision868 variants of the VLB cards are very rare at all.

Just now getting back around to testing the Number Nine 531. For now it simply refuses to boot past the memory test, hanging just before the Promise controller does its thing. I tried setting all the delays on the mobo along with switching between transparent and synchronize modes. Was simply trying to swap cards in my cases machine, I’ll have to test on another VLB board on the bench.

Does not look good.
Did you remove the socketed 2nd Mb of RAM on the card ?