VOGONS


First post, by NitroX infinity

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I've been digging around for information about Yamaha's 3D accelerators and have learned a few things in just an hour or two. Things I believe are worth sharing.

First things first; details on the chips;

- Gouraud Shading
- Texture Mapping
- Hidden Surface Removal
- Video Capture
- Bit Block Transfer
- 128bit Framebuffer (64 bit interleaved)
- Z-Buffering
- Alpha Blending

RPA (Rendering Polygon Accelerator) YGV611:
Maximum Resolution: 1280x1024 @16bit (64K colours)
Gouraud Shading: 550K Triangles/sec
Gouraud Shading + Texture Mapping: 210K Triangles/sec
Memory:
- Framebuffer: up to 32MiB VRAM
- Z-Buffer: up to 16MiB DRAM or VRAM
Short Vector Drawing: 1.6 Million/sec
$80 per piece per 1000

RPA2 YGV612:
Maximum Resolution: 1280x1024 @16bit (64K colours)
Gouraud Shading: 300K Triangles/sec
Gouraud Shading + Texture Mapping: 150K Triangles/sec
Memory: up to 4MiB DRAM*
Frequency: up to 50MHz
- $40 per piece per 1000

* My Tasmania 3D has Fast Page DRAM according to the manual.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/3D+Graphics+chi … B...-a015925755
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Yamaha+3D+graph … ,...-a016824747

April 1995:
Support announced for Microsoft Windows 95 Game SDK
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Yamaha+announce … s...-a016905222

March 1995:
Gemsoft announces their game Fighter Wing will support YGV611
http://www.cbronline.com/news/gemsofts_fighte … _ygv611_3d_chip
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/fighter-wing

September 11th, 1995:
Western Digital announced products with Yamaha's RPA
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Western+Digital … m...-a017381945

September 27th, 1995:
Philips announces acquisition of Western Digitals multimedia products unit (including the Paradise brand)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Philips+To+Purc … B...-a017494421

March 1996:
Support announced for Direct3D
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Yamaha+announce … t3D.-a018052668

Misc sources;
http://web.archive.org/web/19970111223353/htt … s/tasmania.html

Last edited by NitroX infinity on 2014-04-04, 09:50. Edited 6 times in total.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 2 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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Yes, the chip on my card is from week 38 of 1995 and the box also has copyright dated to 1995.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 3 of 19, by Stiletto

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Though NitroX probably has these, I've attached the actual datasheets. 😀

Attachments

  • Filename
    ygv612.pdf
    File size
    449.67 KiB
    Downloads
    321 downloads
    File comment
    Yamaha YGV612 datasheet
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    ygv611.pdf
    File size
    78.31 KiB
    Downloads
    301 downloads
    File comment
    Yamaha YGV611 product brief
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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No, I did not have those. Thank you 😀 I'll update my post with info from those files.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 5 of 19, by Stiletto

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You're welcome! 😀 If you are looking for permanent links, I also uploaded them to VGAMuseum.info.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 6 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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I'm trying to contact Yamaha, to ask them questions about the chips. But I'm running into a roadblock here, there doesn't seem to be a general contact e-mail address, all they have is contact forms for recent music instruments and hifi. Anyone got an idea how to get in touch with them?

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 7 of 19, by Slaventus86

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I've contacted russian Yamaha's department about two years ago. They told me that department which worked with those chips was closed long ime ago, they didn't provide me with any useful info actually. May be ex-engineer who worked on RPA's could help, but this is can be a trouble finding him:)

Videocard Virtual Museum

Reply 8 of 19, by swampfox

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These look pretty neat! Any info on OpenGL compatibility or performance? Or perhaps a comparison with other cards at the time such as 3dlabs GLINT?

Interesting piece of hardware. Thanks for the info, NitroX and Stiletto!

Swampfox's Computing - Google+ and YouTube: https://plus.google.com/108854180391399268575

Reply 9 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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I don't know anything about OpenGL support. I know the chips support RenderWare, BRender and RenderMorphics and support for Direct3D was announced.

As for performance, Hopefully I'll be benchmarking my YGV612 pretty soon. But I don't know if I can provide FPS numbers.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 10 of 19, by Stiletto

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NitroX infinity wrote:

I'm trying to contact Yamaha, to ask them questions about the chips. But I'm running into a roadblock here, there doesn't seem to be a general contact e-mail address, all they have is contact forms for recent music instruments and hifi. Anyone got an idea how to get in touch with them?

Slaventus86 wrote:

I've contacted russian Yamaha's department about two years ago. They told me that department which worked with those chips was closed long ime ago, they didn't provide me with any useful info actually. May be ex-engineer who worked on RPA's could help, but this is can be a trouble finding him:)

NitroX, usually you want "Yamaha Semiconductor" for these questions.
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/lsi/

I've been down these roads before, for other Yamaha chips (audio). Yes, often the departments are closed and they no longer have info.

But let me tell you, I have had tons of LUCK. So perhaps I will take on this challenge for you guys.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 11 of 19, by vetz

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Some reviews and an advertisement from 1995:

CGW advertisement November 1995: [ Page 1 ]
Reviews: [ Dimension 3D 01.08.96 ] [ User review 11.30.96 ]

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

Reply 13 of 19, by Stiletto

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NitroX infinity wrote:

@Stiletto; Thank you 😀

No problem NitroX, I like a good challenge.

You should see my to-do list... 😁

Thus far, communications with Yamaha LSI yields the expected results: nothing. So now we go off-road, as Slaventus86 suggested...

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 14 of 19, by Stiletto

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BTW, in the PCI ID tables out there you can find reference to:
VEN_1073&DEV_0002 Yamaha® RPA3 3D Graphics YGV615

This must be even rarer! I see you already know about it
http://forum.beyond3d.com/archive/index.php/t-52625.html
but other than what I've wrote, extremely little is known.

I was looking into it a few weeks ago and I did find (from six years ago) one owner of the Yamaha RPA3, they claimed it was in their laptop. Lost the link again but it's around somewhere...
[EDIT] here: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid= … 01212644AAy8pqU

However, it could have been a misidentified PCI ID (I've had this happen once on a defective motherboard) or just someone who didn't know what they were talking about. No IP address or email address, seemed hopeless to track that person down. 😉

Notes:
"RPA3 was only 16 bit color in Windows and was memory hungry" - http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?11 … ll=1#post843939

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 15 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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I see you already know about it

No I did not. And if it is just a mobile chip, it won't be of much interest to me.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 16 of 19, by Stiletto

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NitroX infinity wrote:

I see you already know about it

No I did not. And if it is just a mobile chip, it won't be of much interest to me.

no-X isn't you on Beyond3D? Go figure... *shrug*

But yeah, it wouldn't be too interesting if it's a mobile chip. Still, it appears to be the last one in the RPA series.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 17 of 19, by NitroX infinity

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Nope, I'm NitroX infinity pretty much everywhere or something similar (nitroxinfinity, nitrox_infinity, etc) I'm registered on Beyond3D but can't post there; the activation e-mail doesn't get through my ISP's spamfilter.

NitroX infinity's 3D Accelerators Arena | Yamaha RPA YGV611 & RPA2 YGV612 Info

Reply 18 of 19, by vetz

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Images, video and more info on the card here:
Re: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

Reply 19 of 19, by vetz

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Manual scanned and uploaded to Vogonsdrivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=705

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes