VOGONS


First post, by keropi

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Hiya!

we have made a new thing and since this 2nd prototype is very close to the final version it is time to officially unveil it 😀

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This is a 4in1 design aimed at 386 and 486 ISA systems or bridgeboard environments (like the amiga) where slots are a premium
The main features are:

  • Cirrus 5434 VGA controller with 2MB vram
  • Opti 82C930A sound controller with a Yamaha OPL3 (SB/SBPRO/WSS)
  • PCMIDI mpu-401 interface
  • Realtek 8019 network controller with bootrom support

The VGA portion jumpers are the usual one can expect from a later isa vga card: disable jumper , 0WS , IRQ2 and lastly 2 selectable video bios banks.
We have also added the FEATURE connector for use with the CRT Terminator card.
The Joystick port is on a header (top left corner) and a standard joyport bracket can be used. (there was no free space on the backside of the card and the bracket needs to be designed - once the card is really finalized).
For the PCMIDI MPU portion we have the usual midi routing jumper block so one can create combos with ports and pcmidi or opti mpu.
The nic bootrom can be used for stuff like XT-IDE bios , Y2K fixes etc
All eeproms used are of the 29F010/020/040 PLCC32 variety.
This is again a 4-layer board design , filled to the brim and as small as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is a prototype and thus it does not use all "higher tier" components for resistors/capacitors like the final version will.
More info will be posted on the card's site: https://pcmidi.eu/sonicvisionpro.html

Here are some more closeups of the various sections:

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Comments and thoughts are welcome - but do keep in mind any additions or alterations can be impossible to be made at this stage...

🎵 🎧 SoundVision PRO,MK1869 , PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website
💾💾💾 Looking for a full version of LIST ENHANCED 2.4y1 by V. Buerg, message me if you have it for sale! 💾💾💾

Reply 1 of 41, by keropi

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there is a also a byproduct because of the research made for the VGA portion of the card - the VisionPRO 😁

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this has the same features as stated above, just a CL5434 ISA vga with nice output quality 😀

🎵 🎧 SoundVision PRO,MK1869 , PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website
💾💾💾 Looking for a full version of LIST ENHANCED 2.4y1 by V. Buerg, message me if you have it for sale! 💾💾💾

Reply 3 of 41, by badmojo

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Wonderful work guys as always 👍

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 4 of 41, by jmarsh

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What, no IDE port?

Reply 5 of 41, by SScorpio

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jmarsh wrote on 2026-08-24, 22:31:

What, no IDE port?

That's what I was think. No Super IO for COM, Parallel, Floppy, and IDE. 😁

Reply 6 of 41, by jmarsh

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SScorpio wrote on 2026-08-24, 23:14:

That's what I was think. No Super IO for COM, Parallel, Floppy, and IDE. 😁

I was actually only half-joking since an IDE port only needs an address decoder and a buffer, rather than any sort of dedicated controller.

Reply 7 of 41, by zapbuzz

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that's a good card but I’d prefer a trident GPU myself js

Reply 8 of 41, by aitotat

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Wow, what an excellent card! But maybe the extra IDE would have been nice since older systems only have one.

But that would need to be a real IDE with jumpers to configure primary/secondary/tertiary etc. Not the Opti CD-ROM IDE (needs to be initialized with software so not usable with HDD) and it cannot be a PnP IDE for almost the same reason: non PnP BIOSes would need software init. So more jumpers would be needed to confuse and how many would need the extra IDE anyway?

My youtube channel

Reply 9 of 41, by igna78

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These are two fantastic cards that will end up in my shopping cart 😁

Reply 10 of 41, by Marmes

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This card had in mind 4 things and 4 things only.
1 VGA
2 Audio in/out
3 Midi
4 Lan.
Everything else you can do with it is an extra.
You can have XTIDE as bonus . As if you had a Lan card with support for it. You would need an IDE controller anyway.
We could add an IDE or CF card support ,but design wise would put the card very expensive and difficult to produce.
Any idea is always welcome!
This is intended to use anywhere you want, but our main target are 286/386 PC's , SBCs and Amiga bridge boarded computers.

Reply 11 of 41, by carlostex

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I can understand people asking for IDE port, but then like Marmes said, you'd need a separate IO controller anyway for COM, Printer and floppy. So i think this project already manages to save a bunch of ISA slots by integrating 4 in 1. This is immense value for a PC someone might like a lot but won't use so much because of limited expandability.

For a small form factor SBC build this is an absolute killer kard 😀.

Reply 13 of 41, by Shponglefan

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Very impressive work as always!

Despite being aimed at older systems (386, etc), my main use case is likely a Pentium 4 ISA setup. One of the main reasons I'm happy to have an option to disable the VGA, since this would work well in a multi GPU setup with an ISA VGA option for legacy support.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 14 of 41, by CharlieFoxtrot

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Very impressive work again! Not necessarily something I can see a must have personally, but there sure are use cases for those who absolutely need to minimize ISA slot usage. Like with some of those small form factor LPX style systems with only couple or so free ISA slots. Tbose systems also often have integrated IO, so this would provide pretty much all the "rest".

Reply 15 of 41, by chrismeyer6

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Wow what a seriously impressive project.

Reply 16 of 41, by BitWrangler

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Spectacular! Holy moly it's a useful sounding card. Damn, as if I didn't have enough projects and the existence of this made me think of 5 more 🤣

I respect the choice of what to include. This and an I/O card, done. People forget that an i/o card is already 4 in one, when you had to have separate HDD, floppy, serial, game cards back in the day... maybe you got parallel on the display card, maybe you got a serial parallel combo, or maybe you also needed a standalone card for that too.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 17 of 41, by st31276a

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This is epic.

Not including IDE is a good thing.

Reply 18 of 41, by rasz_pl

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wow, this is great 😮
is CL5434 wired with support for Vesa Linear Framebuffer?

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS Zenith Z-386 MFM-300 ZBIOS disassembly

Reply 19 of 41, by bijl

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As always, hats off, a-ma-zing job guys! Will sign up for both models when ordering is open... 😁