wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-14, 01:24:

Still, the latter isn't quite true. While doom, doom2, and heretic all just fiddle with the bog standard vga interface, descent, duke3d, rise of the triad, strife(?), warcraft 2, and quite a few others all use VBE, and will cheerily use SDD. I would not call it rare.

Yes. a lot of DOS games used VESA BIOS modes. If the VESA implementation of your graphics card was missing or of bad quality, you often could use UNIVBE, which got later renamed to SDD, to get better VESA support. But at this point, we are just talking about using VESA to set a high-resolution graphics mode, to switch banks, and (in case of VESA 2.0) to make the whole video memory visible at once at a high memory address ("linear frame buffer"). We are not talking acceleration (having the graphics chip fill/copy data on its own) at this point.

Wow I just logged on and..I'm not entirely sure what the last few posts had to do with my original question, feels like things have gone a little off topic. However, do appreciate the info regarding the pass through cable, having 3Dfx for quake certainly wouldn't hurt.

Horun wrote on 2023-08-13, 18:13:

I have one 512k version of TVGA8900 (JAX-8216A) and it has two -10 soldered and two -8 socketed...KM44C256's. My 1Mb TVGA8900 JAX JA-8232E/V3 has eight TMS-44C256 -7's...
Both have jumpers to allow working in a 8bit ISA slot, the one pictured here does not appear to have them.....just for reference.....

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but this is one of the few direct references to the JAX JA-8232E/V3 VGA card I have found on the web. Do you, or anybody have the jumper settings for this card? Specifically the one(s) that allow it to be used in an 8-bit ISA slot?

dylanfm wrote on 2026-06-30, 02:44:

Horun wrote on 2023-08-13, 18:13:

I have one 512k version of TVGA8900 (JAX-8216A) and it has two -10 soldered and two -8 socketed...KM44C256's. My 1Mb TVGA8900 JAX JA-8232E/V3 has eight TMS-44C256 -7's...
Both have jumpers to allow working in a 8bit ISA slot, the one pictured here does not appear to have them.....just for reference.....

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but this is one of the few direct references to the JAX JA-8232E/V3 VGA card I have found on the web. Do you, or anybody have the jumper settings for this card? Specifically the one(s) that allow it to be used in an 8-bit ISA slot?

Best (AI) suggestion would seem to be one of the open jumpers; possibly J6

Thanks for the info. My jumpers are in completely different places, but that could be right. It isn't working for me, but i'm dealing with a bunch of unknowns (I don't know the correct jumper settings, I don't know if the video card even works, and I don't know if the MB i'm connecting it to is working). I guess I need to try the video card in another computer to test it out, but I'm worried about disabling that computer's on-board video and then not being able to get it back.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2026-06-30, 08:49:

Best (AI) suggestion would seem to be one of the open jumpers; possibly J6

The attachment Trident_TVGA_8900D_9000I_Users_Manual.pdf is no longer available

Ok, i figured it out. The jumper settings in that pdf seem to be right. It is a little confusing because J9 is actually 3 jumpers all in a row in the middle of the other jumpers and they aren't labeled super clearly. So I needed to jumper all 3 J9 pins along with j6 to get it to work in 8-bit mode. The video card and my computer seem to be working.