Connecting a PCI ATI Rage 128 to a laptop Cardbus socket and living to tell the tale \ VOGONS

Connecting a PCI ATI Rage 128 to a laptop Cardbus socket and living to tell the tale

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First post, by hlnk

hlnk Offline

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Joined: 2026-02-28, 13:03
Location: Northern Spain

So I wanted to revamp a Compaq Armada 100S by upgrading its graphics capabilities. Why not buy literally anything else you might ask? Well... I don't have a satisfying answer to that. I did have a Rage 128 GL on its weirder PCI variant.

The Compaq Armada 100S motherboard has a CardBus socket, and CardBus is at its core 32bit PCI, so theoretically it could accept any PCI card, right? So I built a custom adapter. The most difficult part was finding actual CardBus connectors for sale, but I found some.

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It did work. The bandwidth is lower than on a conventional PCI but it's miles better than the Cyberblade i7 it shipped with.

Everything is kind of precarious right now and it needs a lot of cables, but this is a giant step towards making it usable. I didn't even think it would be possible!

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Next step would be to make a monster laptop with a custom chassis and better part layout.

If anyone is interested in doing something totally-not-worth-the-time-and-money like this, I could share the Gerbers for the adapter board.

Reply 1 of 2, by wierd_w

Posted on Yesterday, 17:57

wierd_w Offline

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Joined: 2023-07-14, 06:20

A 'possibly more fun, and silly' project, would be rolling a user-reprogrammable, large sized FPGA onto a cardbus card, with some exposed GPIO type output lines.

A kind of 'swiss army card', that you just flash a 'personality' core image on, then attach a suitable cable to the header strip for the flashed personality's function.

One can dream, right?

Reply 2 of 2, by MikeSG

Posted on Today, 10:04

MikeSG Offline

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Joined: 2023-02-14, 08:31

I would frankenstein a new Rage 128 out of an old cardbus adapter, leaving the laptop intact.. but ATI datasheets can be a riddle if there's no exact schematic to follow

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