demiurge wrote on 2024-07-21, 23:03:

Does anyone have anything on this Metheus card/chipset? It looks like a 9-pin CGA card. […]
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Does anyone have anything on this Metheus card/chipset? It looks like a 9-pin CGA card.

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Does anyone have information on this Vox Technologies PLC-508? I have the chipset manual but nothing on the card itself. I would need the jumpers since it only boots to a pure blue screen.

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Does this diagnostic card have its own graphics adapter, it only boots to a random collection of characters?

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The datasheet for the main chip on the second one might help determine what the jumpers on your card do if you trace where the jumpers lead and try to match with the datasheet info.

https://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet_pd … -inc/TP6508.pdf

EDIT: Topro Technology web site https://web.archive.org/web/20010430112211/ht … com.tw/english/

darry wrote on 2024-07-22, 00:07:

The datasheet for the main chip on the second one might help determine what the jumpers on your card do if you trace where the jumpers lead and try to match with the datasheet info.

https://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet_pd … -inc/TP6508.pdf

EDIT: Topro Technology web site https://web.archive.org/web/20010430112211/ht … com.tw/english/

Thanks, I tried to convey I already did the google-fu and found the datasheet but that doesn't do what I need.

The archived website is more helpful though. I did try searching for it but the wayback machine doesn't have a search.

demiurge wrote on 2024-07-22, 00:55:

darry wrote on 2024-07-22, 00:07:

The datasheet for the main chip on the second one might help determine what the jumpers on your card do if you trace where the jumpers lead and try to match with the datasheet info.

https://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet_pd … -inc/TP6508.pdf

EDIT: Topro Technology web site https://web.archive.org/web/20010430112211/ht … com.tw/english/

Thanks, I tried to convey I already did the google-fu and found the datasheet but that doesn't do what I need.

The archived website is more helpful though. I did try searching for it but the wayback machine doesn't have a search.

Not Vox, but maybe try this for some informed pointers...

Also, driver package from Vox ...

Good job PCH !

demiurge wrote on 2024-07-21, 23:03:

Does anyone have anything on this Metheus card/chipset? It looks like a 9-pin CGA card.

Does anyone know anything about this Barco chipset? It could be a DSP chip, a FPGA, a Metheus chip, but I doubt that Barco would scratch off their own information.

First one is very odd adapter. Has multi banks of 256k ram (8chip x 64kx4) yet the Ramdac is a 16 color one like EGA.
Last one is def for dual monitors but can't find much yet. Will dig around later and see what I can find...
added: Having the FCC ID's might help if there are any...

demiurge wrote on 2024-07-21, 23:03:

Does anyone have anything on this Metheus card/chipset? It looks like a 9-pin CGA card.

Did you get this card? I saw it listed on ebay the other day and I was interested in it because it seems very uncommon.

I actually saved a couple links that I found when researching it.

There is this discussion here:
https://uncreativelabs.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.p … f91c3d8e0946dce

With the following post made about it:

http://global.mitsubishielectric.com/company/ … vol75/vol75.pdf […]
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http://global.mitsubishielectric.com/company/ … vol75/vol75.pdf

I probably have one of the top end 8 bit video cards of the day and not to mention truly vintage, not as good as an IBM PGA but with more color depth.

A circa 1987 metheus 8842 9 pin video card with 512kb double sided vram hooked to the secondary chipset 120ns with Along with 256kb of fast 100ns mb81c466 multiport dram hooked to the main 32bit Metheus 02204899-00 MB650305 chipset

http://global.mitsubishielectric.com/company/ … vol75/vol75.pdf page 22 odd that it mentions NTSC as the intent

Sadly I can't get this thing running I'm not really sure what the pinout is, it also has a fair number of jumpers which I can't decipher.

I have a strong feeling that it would match into on of my old computer portrait machines but without drivers or information I am somewhat stuck, one of these days I will need a decent scope to see whats what.

Anyone have any ideas what this might be? I was thinking a high color NTSC broadcast video card AKA 512x480 with a buffer for maybe a related capture card.

Originally I thought it might drive on of these big radius or mitsubishi 22" monitors I have from the early 80's

The mitsubishi article linked in the post can be found here, but it doesn't really help much other than to describe some of the memory chips.

The only other info I was able to find was that Metheus was a part of Tektronix, and I found these documents about some of their older products from the early 80s: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/metheus/

Horun wrote on 2024-07-22, 02:24:

added: Having the FCC ID's might help if there are any...

I can't find any FCC IDs at all.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-22, 03:00:

Did you get this card? I saw it listed on ebay the other day and I was interested in it because it seems very uncommon.

Yeah, I got it. I might not have if I knew it was 9-pin and not 15-pin. But it will be an addition to the VGAmusuem.

Horun wrote on 2024-07-22, 02:24:

First one is very odd adapter. Has multi banks of 256k ram (8chip x 64kx4) yet the Ramdac is a 16 color one like EGA.

Yeah, that adapter seems to focus on high resolutions, not on high color depth. That's typical for CAD at that time. CAD was processing line drawings with a clearly limited amount of colors, just as the amount of differently colored pens for plotting the drawings was also limited. There was no anti-aliasing or color gradients, so 16 colors were enough, but due to the missing anti-aliasing, high resolution was important. On that card, we find a 64MHz and a 42.74MHz oscillator. Likely one oscillator is used for the bus interface and/or drawing engine, and the other one is the pixel clock. As the card uses VRAM, seperation of pixel clock and bus/drawing clock is straightforward.

demiurge wrote on 2024-07-22, 11:43:

I might not have if I knew it was 9-pin and not 15-pin. But it will be an addition to the VGAmusuem.

As it has a RAMDAC, you can likely connect it to a standard analog CRT or LCD monitor, you just need to adapt the pinout. Finding the pinout should be simple: You can trace the three analog lines from the DAC, some pins will be ground and the remaining pins will be HSYNC/VSYNC or just CSYNC. The PGA pinout is likely, but not the only possibility. As the card has a ROM, maybe you can do something with it even without extra software.

Posted the Topro to the VGAmusuem, it works fine when tested on another slot. If anyone has any information about the jumpers or even how to contact the company (they are ignoring me at this point), let me know.

https://vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/k2 … 92-topro-tp6508