I'm doing inventory of all my old hardware, and every single S3 card I have got has a lot of headers 😁
I remembered that some S3 cards had some sort of MPEG daughterboards, but I can't find any model number or even a photograph of them. Do they work in Windows 3.1x by the way?
I think that my Pentium MMX 233 MHz. was able to decode MPEG without any special hardware support, although I'm not sure.
What kind of MPEG do you have in mind? IIRC the minimum requirement for DVD decoding was roughly PIII-500 without any special acceleration, PII-300 with partial acceleration (motion compensation, for example ATI Rage Pro), and even lower (possibly below 200 MHz) with motion compensation plus IDCT (for example ATI Rage 128, or several cards from later generations).
MPEG-1 in lower resolutions has lower requirements, obviously.
This depends somehow on the player, some dvd players are able to play already with a P2 300 MHz or Celeron 400 MHz by software.
I did some comparison in another thread with a base P2 233MHz system and accelerator cards.
Ati cards are good with MC and IDCT, so look out for the RageII+DVD f.e.
For accelerator boards you have to see if the board needs a normal VESA or AFC connector. Some Pentium with PCI IDE Controller and DMA should be enough then. SCSI may even work with a 486.
Retronn.de - Vintage Hardware Gallery, Drivers, Guides, Videos. Now with file search
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DVI2PCIe alignment and 2D image quality measurement tool
I think we're talking MPEG1 boards.
S3 had Scenic MX1 and MX2. MX1 can be a daughtercard or PCI card. MX2 connects to Trio64V+ or Virge through the S3 "Scenic Highway" bus (some form of VESA feature interface).
At one of my local surplus places I just saw a DXR3 card in the bins. I think that only requires a P133.
By the way, OP is that a Gazillionaire avatar? Best game evar!
I've seen S3 based cards with memory expansion boards attached. Are you sure the headers you are seeing on yours aren't for that?
I have Diamond's S3 Trio 64V+ with Scenic MX2 daughter board
This is how the board looks like:
The card with installed module:
A more generic MX2 for you:
And an S3 with MX2 alredy soldered onto it. I'm not sure what the daughterboard connector on back and top, though. Another MX2?:
GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000
wrote:By the way, OP is that a Gazillionaire avatar? Best game evar!
That's the cron-o-john from Day of the Tentacle.
If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.
DonutKing, indeed it is! But Logistics, I don't know of that game, I'll take a look into it in a minute.
Guys, thank you! You're the best! At long last I've seen one of those MPEG add-ons. Here in Spain we were left wondering what the heck was that Video CD fuss about, because I doubt if there's a pic of one of those Scenic add-ons in any of my old magazines. I'd love to have one, though, to fiddle with it but looks like there's not a single one on eBay right now.
Edit: Wasn't there also an S3 sound card?
S3 Sonic/AD according to that Infoworld article I linked to earlier. All it says is that it is a programmable DAC and can directly link up to the MPEG cards.
There's one on eBay right now. If I keep on budget this month I may give it a try, just for the lulz.
No no, the DXR3 is a pci card Creative sold to decode MPEG2(DVD) and I use to use one with my Pentium 233. It worked good, but at the time I had a cruddy monitor and my headphones were uncomfortable after an hour.so it was better to watch DVDs on my Xbox/TV.
wrote:No no, the DXR3 is a pci card Creative sold to decode MPEG2(DVD) and I use to use one with my Pentium 233. It worked good, but at the time I had a cruddy monitor and my headphones were uncomfortable after an hour.so it was better to watch DVDs on my Xbox/TV.
Even so, I'd love to have one. I'm just experimenting with a REALmagic Hollywood Plus, but since I'm unable to locate the install CD-ROM I can't run it on any dedicated software.
Under Linux, however, it seems that MPlayer has built-in support for it.
I have in my collection a Stealth card with a MX2 addon IIRC...
how does it get used? you need a special player for it? can it also be used to decode mp3s or something? haven't really tested it, just that the vga part works and I have no idea about those mpeg addons 😒
I suddenly want to mess with it so any info will be greatly appreciated! 😊
DVD audio is not MPEG1 layer 3. There was an ESS audio chip with layer 3 acceleration though!
Surely you need a special player to use that DB. There was no standard API back then.
interesting, ESS with mp3 acceleration?
I guess I'll have to install the card and try to find more... will keep you posted of my findings
Sorry I forgot a detail about the MP3 aspect. The Diamond Monster Sound MX400 has a daughtercard header for a RioPC addon that has MP3 acceleration. It's not the ESS Canyon3D chip that does it. I don't know if this daughtercard ever shipped.
Heh, my old trusty Matrox Mystique (MGA-1064SG) have the daugtherboard too? Good. Four connectors to the videocard. Design is so design...
there is a TV-tuner to "complete" the puzzle, but this device is ISA only.
