nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 08:57:

How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time? Card says verticom inc, ASSY […]
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How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time?
Card says verticom inc, ASSY 1700 and the VLSI chips part numbers do t seem to come up with anything, but this looks like it was an expensive card in its day.
Chipset numbers are 8852VV, VC2807-001
and 8847AV, VC2802-0001

I can't find any info about this, but I received a bunch of high end VGA cards of the day and other rare computer bits from a person who ran a graphic design business 30+ years ago.
I found some high end EGA and monochrome cards in here too, including a dual monitor EGA card.

The attachment 20250710_205455.jpg is no longer available

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The attachment 20250710_205520.jpg is no longer available

If it works similarly to this similar looking one, https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at , it likely does not have any onboard VGA compatibility of its own.

EDIT: Assuming the numbers starting with 88 on the main chips on your are date codes, then your card is likely older.

darry wrote on 2025-07-10, 11:31:

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 08:57:

How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time? Card says verticom inc, ASSY […]
Show full quote

How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time?
Card says verticom inc, ASSY 1700 and the VLSI chips part numbers do t seem to come up with anything, but this looks like it was an expensive card in its day.
Chipset numbers are 8852VV, VC2807-001
and 8847AV, VC2802-0001

I can't find any info about this, but I received a bunch of high end VGA cards of the day and other rare computer bits from a person who ran a graphic design business 30+ years ago.
I found some high end EGA and monochrome cards in here too, including a dual monitor EGA card.

The attachment 20250710_205455.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250710_205512.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250710_205520.jpg is no longer available

If it works similarly to this similar looking one, https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at , it likely does not have any onboard VGA compatibility of its own.

EDIT: Assuming the numbers starting with 88 on the main chips on your are date codes, then your card is likely older.

My card has 1988 stamped on it, which means it cant be any older than that, I think this looks like its got a good 1MB of memory installed, which was alot for that time.
Whats the story with that VGA passthrough cable? This card has a VGA connector on it, so I wonder why it needs a seperate VGA card with a single monitor? It appears to be a slightly older variant of my card, its not exactly the same layout.
Would be interesting to try out, but I dont have a suitable cable to test it with.

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 11:56:

My card has 1988 stamped on it, which means it cant be any older than that, I think this looks like its got a good 1MB of memory […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2025-07-10, 11:31:

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 08:57:

How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time? Card says verticom inc, ASSY […]
Show full quote

How would this compare to an ET4000 or comparable cirrus logic or western digital card of the time?
Card says verticom inc, ASSY 1700 and the VLSI chips part numbers do t seem to come up with anything, but this looks like it was an expensive card in its day.
Chipset numbers are 8852VV, VC2807-001
and 8847AV, VC2802-0001

I can't find any info about this, but I received a bunch of high end VGA cards of the day and other rare computer bits from a person who ran a graphic design business 30+ years ago.
I found some high end EGA and monochrome cards in here too, including a dual monitor EGA card.

The attachment 20250710_205455.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250710_205512.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250710_205520.jpg is no longer available

If it works similarly to this similar looking one, https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at , it likely does not have any onboard VGA compatibility of its own.

EDIT: Assuming the numbers starting with 88 on the main chips on your are date codes, then your card is likely older.

My card has 1988 stamped on it, which means it cant be any older than that, I think this looks like its got a good 1MB of memory installed, which was alot for that time.
Whats the story with that VGA passthrough cable? This card has a VGA connector on it, so I wonder why it needs a seperate VGA card with a single monitor? It appears to be a slightly older variant of my card, its not exactly the same layout.
Would be interesting to try out, but I dont have a suitable cable to test it with.

The common 15-pin VGA connector ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_connector ) allows the card to be connected to an analogue RGB monitor, like a VGA or SVGA one, it does not necessarily mean a card has any VGA hardware/register compatibility that software could use.

The passthrough arrangement is conceptually similar to the passthrough used by 3dfx Voodoo 1 and 2 cards, except it is done internally rather than externally.

darry wrote on 2025-07-10, 12:36:

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 11:56:

My card has 1988 stamped on it, which means it cant be any older than that, I think this looks like its got a good 1MB of memory […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2025-07-10, 11:31:

If it works similarly to this similar looking one, https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at , it likely does not have any onboard VGA compatibility of its own.

EDIT: Assuming the numbers starting with 88 on the main chips on your are date codes, then your card is likely older.

My card has 1988 stamped on it, which means it cant be any older than that, I think this looks like its got a good 1MB of memory installed, which was alot for that time.
Whats the story with that VGA passthrough cable? This card has a VGA connector on it, so I wonder why it needs a seperate VGA card with a single monitor? It appears to be a slightly older variant of my card, its not exactly the same layout.
Would be interesting to try out, but I dont have a suitable cable to test it with.

The common 15-pin VGA connector ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_connector ) allows the card to be connected to an analogue RGB monitor, like a VGA or SVGA one, it does not necessarily mean a card has any VGA hardware/register compatibility that software could use.

The passthrough arrangement is conceptually similar to the passthrough used by 3dfx Voodoo 1 and 2 cards, except it is done internally rather than externally.

Ok, ive never really looked into how that used to work. I remember having an early ISA TV tuner that worked with a similar internal ribbon cable that connected to my S3 virge.
So this card was essentially designed to add extra hardware functionality to a VGA system, much like a voodoo card?
I'm guessing it might not necessarily translate into functions that games used however?
Would be awesome if some dosgames can make use of its hardware, as it would make a nice upgrade to my 386.

I've not been able to find any documentation (let alone software) for this beast, but regarding games it's pretty simple: under DOS, games addressed hardware directly, so unless you can find a game specifically written for this card, it won't do a thing. As a rule, acceleration features weren't supported - which explains why some of the fastest VGA cards for DOS games are rather 'dumb', just efficient framebuffers, and more complex cards with a lot of acceleration features actually perform worse (ATi cards, basically anything with VRAM). I'm not actually aware of any DOS games that support XGA, let alone any more obscure 2D accelerators.

Since it is from 1988, I strongly suspect that this card doesn't have VGA hardware on it. I don't see a VGA rom on there. It's probably an add-on accelerator board that expects to connect to a VGA card in a different slot using a VESA feature connector, just like the first generation of 8514a compatibles, TI 340x0 cards, or the Matrox ISA cards.

The earliest card with both VGA & 2d acceleration features that I know of was the original ATI Graphics Ultra ( EXMCOMBOVM ) from March 1991.

Edits

Here is a reference to a $2850 Verticom M-16 & M-256 Graphics cards in 1985 -- https://books.google.com/books?id=_y4EAAAAMBA … 20M-256&f=false
^^ Z80a and MC68000 coprocessors
Here is a reference to a$2399 Verticom "2Page" graphics card / monitor from 1988: https://archive.org/details/pcworld65unse/pag … =verticom+2page
^^ Used an intel 82786 graphics coprocessor
Here is a reference to a $1 ,695 Verticom MX 16/ AT and the $2,095 Verticom MX 256 / AT https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1989-01-31 … /2up?q=verticom
^^ Had onboard VGA, used a TI 34010 graphics coprocessor
I couldn't see an verticom boards in the infoworld graphics roundup from 1990 -- https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59
Looks like Verticom may have been absorbed into Western Digital by that point

Here is a reference to the "Verticom HX16AT, HX256AT, HX256MC" from 1989: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-198 … /2up?q=verticom

https://www.ardent-tool.com/video/8514A_Stand … o_Wants_It.html
"For instance, Verticom has let it be known that while its initial hardware offerings will use the 34010, the company will be offering a higher performance version of its boards, which it will call the HX series. The HX series will incorporate the AI but will use proprietary VLSI—not a reverse-engineered 8514/A chip set — to carry out 8514/A functions. Verticom will supply drivers for Windows and several other programs written directly to this hardware, but will rely on both its AI implementation and its special chips to increase performance of other software applications written to the AI."

So seems like your board is most likely a "Verticom HX256/AT". Can't find a photo though. Looks like it came out right on the cusp of the Paradise acquisition, which complicates things.
https://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/wd/corp … w_fall_1988.pdf

dionb wrote on 2025-07-10, 14:32:

I've not been able to find any documentation (let alone software) for this beast, but regarding games it's pretty simple: under DOS, games addressed hardware directly, so unless you can find a game specifically written for this card, it won't do a thing. As a rule, acceleration features weren't supported - which explains why some of the fastest VGA cards for DOS games are rather 'dumb', just efficient framebuffers, and more complex cards with a lot of acceleration features actually perform worse (ATi cards, basically anything with VRAM). I'm not actually aware of any DOS games that support XGA, let alone any more obscure 2D accelerators.

OK, so thats a bit like how some graphics cards had acceleration features for GUI that games could make no use from, but windows 3.11 could?
I believe thats why many favour the later western digital or cirrus logic cards over the Tseng ET4000 for the same reason, im unsure what games directly supported all its features, but i believe there were games written for it from the likes of Microprose and Electronic Arts, it also seems some games were not fully compatible with that card and performed poorly.
Jazz Jackrabbit performs well on my western digital WD90c30 which if the benchmarks are anything to go by is still a comparable card to a Cirrus logic 5428.

douglar wrote on 2025-07-10, 16:32:

Since it is from 1988, I strongly suspect that this card doesn't have VGA hardware on it. I don't see a VGA rom on there. It' […]
Show full quote

Since it is from 1988, I strongly suspect that this card doesn't have VGA hardware on it. I don't see a VGA rom on there. It's probably an add-on accelerator board that expects to connect to a VGA card in a different slot using a VESA feature connector, just like the first generation of 8514a compatibles, TI 340x0 cards, or the Matrox ISA cards.

The earliest card with both VGA & 2d acceleration features that I know of was the original ATI Graphics Ultra ( EXMCOMBOVM ) from March 1991.

Edits

Here is a reference to a $2850 Verticom M-16 & M-256 Graphics cards in 1985 -- https://books.google.com/books?id=_y4EAAAAMBA … 20M-256&f=false
^^ Z80a and MC68000 coprocessors
Here is a reference to a$2399 Verticom "2Page" graphics card / monitor from 1988: https://archive.org/details/pcworld65unse/pag … =verticom+2page
^^ Used an intel 82786 graphics coprocessor
Here is a reference to a $1 ,695 Verticom MX 16/ AT and the $2,095 Verticom MX 256 / AT https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1989-01-31 … /2up?q=verticom
^^ Had onboard VGA, used a TI 34010 graphics coprocessor
I couldn't see an verticom boards in the infoworld graphics roundup from 1990 -- https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59
Looks like Verticom may have been absorbed into Western Digital by that point

Here is a reference to the "Verticom HX16AT, HX256AT, HX256MC" from 1989: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-198 … /2up?q=verticom

https://www.ardent-tool.com/video/8514A_Stand … o_Wants_It.html
"For instance, Verticom has let it be known that while its initial hardware offerings will use the 34010, the company will be offering a higher performance version of its boards, which it will call the HX series. The HX series will incorporate the AI but will use proprietary VLSI—not a reverse-engineered 8514/A chip set — to carry out 8514/A functions. Verticom will supply drivers for Windows and several other programs written directly to this hardware, but will rely on both its AI implementation and its special chips to increase performance of other software applications written to the AI."

So seems like your board is most likely a "Verticom HX256/AT". Can't find a photo though. Looks like it came out right on the cusp of the Paradise acquisition, which complicates things.
https://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/wd/corp … w_fall_1988.pdf

Thats interesting, looks like it was a rather high end and expensive piece of hardware in its day thats now a museum piece.
Would have been interesting to see its capabilities, i guess i could mess around an install an old version of AutoCAD to test the thing out.
Would have been neat if it could have been used in my system, but sounds like its going to be completley useless for games, windows 3.11 might be a different story though?
I should probably submit this card to the retro web library given there is so little info to be found on this.

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 23:17:

Thats interesting, looks like it was a rather high end and expensive piece of hardware in its day thats now a museum piece. Woul […]
Show full quote

Thats interesting, looks like it was a rather high end and expensive piece of hardware in its day thats now a museum piece.
Would have been interesting to see its capabilities, i guess i could mess around an install an old version of AutoCAD to test the thing out.
Would have been neat if it could have been used in my system, but sounds like its going to be completley useless for games, windows 3.11 might be a different story though?
I should probably submit this card to the retro web library given there is so little info to be found on this.

Yes, the 8514a compatibles were > $2000 cards when they came out in the late 80’s. Your 386 20 could out perform like a $20,000 cad station! They lost much of their value when a 486-33 could out pace them for rendering, undesirable dinosaurs when S3 & Mach32 VLB cards could draw 10x faster, and forgotten relics by the time of PCI. Things moved fast back then.

I bet it will work with the 8514a driver thst comes with Windows 3.x if you can find a working vesa feature cable for it. Sounds like it would perform better if you could find a real verticom driver, but that’s going to be tough.

286 & 386 compatible cards ISA cards with advanced 2D GUI drawing were just as much of a leap over original 8514a compatibles regardless of CPU.

The last 64-bit ISA cards (and many late gen 32-bit cards) were a big leap since most of CPU work, via drivers, were reduced to basic draw commands and the video card did the rest.

DOS needed the VLB & PCI cards though. And any work involving textures.

douglar wrote on 2025-07-11, 03:37:

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 23:17:

Thats interesting, looks like it was a rather high end and expensive piece of hardware in its day thats now a museum piece. Woul […]
Show full quote

Thats interesting, looks like it was a rather high end and expensive piece of hardware in its day thats now a museum piece.
Would have been interesting to see its capabilities, i guess i could mess around an install an old version of AutoCAD to test the thing out.
Would have been neat if it could have been used in my system, but sounds like its going to be completley useless for games, windows 3.11 might be a different story though?
I should probably submit this card to the retro web library given there is so little info to be found on this.

Yes, the 8514a compatibles were > $2000 cards when they came out in the late 80’s. Your 386 20 could out perform like a $20,000 cad station! They lost much of their value when a 486-33 could out pace them for rendering, undesirable dinosaurs when S3 & Mach32 VLB cards could draw 10x faster, and forgotten relics by the time of PCI. Things moved fast back then.

I bet it will work with the 8514a driver thst comes with Windows 3.x if you can find a working vesa feature cable for it. Sounds like it would perform better if you could find a real verticom driver, but that’s going to be tough.

It's a shame so little drivers/software remains to this day for alot of this older hardware.
Doesn't help that this was a rare and expensive bit of hardware either.
It would be interesting to try it in my 386 if I make up a cable for it and have a play around.
This would be a good project for one of the retro computing youtubers to do a video on.

I found one of these a while back that I want to put in a 286 build
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/matrox-mg-108

here is what the cable looks like:

Maybe you could chop up a floppy cable to fit

The odd thing about the card is that I don't see a ROM. Might need a driver to work if there's no ROM.

douglar wrote on 2025-07-11, 22:24:

I found one of these a while back that I want to put in a 286 build https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/matrox-mg-108 […]
Show full quote

I found one of these a while back that I want to put in a 286 build
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/matrox-mg-108

here is what the cable looks like:

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The attachment IMG_2845.jpeg is no longer available

Maybe you could chop up a floppy cable to fit

The odd thing about the card is that I don't see a ROM. Might need a driver to work if there's no ROM.

Perhaps a user manual and drivers will surface someday for this.
I think it might be easy enough to make my own cable should I find the right connectors, these cables were not particularly rare, but I dont have one anymore.
I could carefully cut down a floppy connector as you say if worst comes to worse.

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-10, 23:17:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

OK, so thats a bit like how some graphics cards had acceleration features for GUI that games could make no use from, but windows 3.11 could?
I believe thats why many favour the later western digital or cirrus logic cards over the Tseng ET4000 for the same reason, im unsure what games directly supported all its features, but i believe there were games written for it from the likes of Microprose and Electronic Arts, it also seems some games were not fully compatible with that card and performed poorly.
Jazz Jackrabbit performs well on my western digital WD90c30 which if the benchmarks are anything to go by is still a comparable card to a Cirrus logic 5428.

The difference is that Windows 3.x offers hardware abstraction: Windows provides APIs (GDI in this case), where DOS does not. Windows software uses API calls to draw things on the screen, and underneath that, video drivers can take those API calls and hand them down to acceleration calls to the video card. DOS doesn't have that abstraction, if a piece of software wants to use acceleration, it needs to do all the work itself, requiring different code for different cards. That was way beyond the scope of game programmers, only CAD software actually made this investment - which makes sense as no single acceleration standard was dominant in the DOS era; XGA came closest, but only ATi offered full compatibility with it, and back in the 1980s and 1990s their market share was far smaller than in the 2000s.

Origin, Apogee and ID pushed the limits of what EGA and VGA could do, but never strayed into acceleration as the business case just didn't make sense, particularly as the performance of raw framebuffers combined with powerful CPUs was more than sufficient to keep up with and later exceed more elegant accelerated options. And yes, that explains why the relatively simple WDC90C30 cards could keep up with later more fully featured Cirrus Logic chips (the GD542x series had basic 2D acceleration) and trounce solutions with more focus on acceleration than on raw framebuffer performance (ATi...).

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-12, 00:11:

Perhaps a user manual and drivers will surface someday for this.
I think it might be easy enough to make my own cable should I find the right connectors, these cables were not particularly rare, but I dont have one anymore.
I could carefully cut down a floppy connector as you say if worst comes to worse.

Pepino posted some pictures of a driver disk and manual here: https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at

I reached out to him to see if he can share

dionb wrote on 2025-07-12, 00:59:

no single acceleration standard was dominant in the DOS era; XGA came closest, but only ATi offered full compatibility with it

You mean 8514/A, rather than XGA, right?
There was a bunch of 8514/A compatibles - eg. ATI mach8, mach32, WD9500.
But I don't know about any XGA compatible from ATI.

douglar wrote on 2025-07-12, 01:03:

nzoomed wrote on 2025-07-12, 00:11:

Perhaps a user manual and drivers will surface someday for this.
I think it might be easy enough to make my own cable should I find the right connectors, these cables were not particularly rare, but I dont have one anymore.
I could carefully cut down a floppy connector as you say if worst comes to worse.

Pepino posted some pictures of a driver disk and manual here: https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … erticom-hx16-at

I reached out to him to see if he can share

If that disk can be archived, that will be priceless. Hopefully the disk has not degraded over that time.

Grzyb wrote on 2025-07-12, 01:46:

You mean 8514/A, rather than XGA, right? There was a bunch of 8514/A compatibles - eg. ATI mach8, mach32, WD9500. But I don't kn […]
Show full quote

dionb wrote on 2025-07-12, 00:59:

no single acceleration standard was dominant in the DOS era; XGA came closest, but only ATi offered full compatibility with it

You mean 8514/A, rather than XGA, right?
There was a bunch of 8514/A compatibles - eg. ATI mach8, mach32, WD9500.
But I don't know about any XGA compatible from ATI.

Don’t forget about TIGA. It was the next big thing.

https://archive.org/details/198911ByteMagazin … 10&view=theater

douglar wrote on 2025-07-12, 03:27:

Don’t forget about TIGA. It was the next big thing.

Yes, but these two categories were clearly distinguished:
- fixed-function accelerators, like 8514/A, recommended for GUI
- coprocessors, like TIGA, recommended for CAD

Grzyb wrote on 2025-07-12, 04:09:

Yes, but these two categories were clearly distinguished: - fixed-function accelerators, like 8514/A, recommended for GUI - copr […]
Show full quote

douglar wrote on 2025-07-12, 03:27:

Don’t forget about TIGA. It was the next big thing.

Yes, but these two categories were clearly distinguished:
- fixed-function accelerators, like 8514/A, recommended for GUI
- coprocessors, like TIGA, recommended for CAD

That’s a good point to make. They were different philosophies for sure. The general purpose processors can usually get to market faster and can be more flexible, but if you are able to identify all the functions you need and put them into a fixed function asic, it is likely to win on cost, speed & power all at the same time, as long as the requirements don’t change too much of course.

What’s amazing to me is that verticom had an entirely new graphic coprocessor family about every year. Z80 & MC68000 in 1985, intel 82786 in 1986, TI 34010 in 1988, and the custom vlsi chips in 1989. Those device driver writers were busy for sure.

Sounds like the custom vlsi/verticom chips in the OP’s card might have been more of a fixed function device. Perhaps western digital acquired verticom to get that functionality. Their first windows accelerator WD90C33 didn’t come out until 1992.

Looks like there was an addon daughter board for a second monitor too. I don’t see a rom so I don’t suppose either could have been used as a primary monitor at boot time.