Bought this vlb video card from Finnish auction site and it arrived today. I only had one vlb video card before that a tseng labs et4000/w32p and it is in my 486 33Mhz pc. Now I have a spare in case the one in there fails. Both of my cards have 2mb memory.

I wonder how compatibility and performance of the new card compares to the old tseng labs card.

cyclone3d wrote:

doaks80 wrote:

jaZz_KCS wrote:

- PLG100-VH vocal harmony
- PLG100-DX DX7 FM synthesis

Any games make use of/enhanced by these?

Nope, totally for music production... I wonder if you can re-route midi to them though. That would be pretty trippy to have DX7 play your MIDI.

I have an SY-99 keyboard (FM + Synth). I haven't tried using it for MIDI in games though.

You can't do that. The MIDI specs on such FM synths are completely different than on GM modules. First and foremost, they are not standardised like GM, but also there can be major differences between the MIDI specs of different FM synths. Furthermore, the PLG100-DX has some voice loading issues - it has to happen through a specific software editor and the method Yamaha chose is pretty bone-headed.

On the other hand, if you were to stuff the PLG-100VH in a XG module such as the MU-128, MU-1000, or MU-2000, you might be able to use the effects on GM or XG music.

Baoran wrote:

Bought this vlb video card from Finnish auction site and it arrived today. I only had one vlb video card before that a tseng labs et4000/w32p and it is in my 486 33Mhz pc. Now I have a spare in case the one in there fails. Both of my cards have 2mb memory.

stealthpro.jpg

I wonder how compatibility and performance of the new card compares to the old tseng labs card.

In pure DOS VGA, I'd expect the ET4000 to win performance, the S3 928 in SVGA compatibility. Probably the 928 would win in Windows performance, as for SVGA DOS performance... no idea...

Both are very decent cards though 😀

Baoran wrote:

Bought this vlb video card from Finnish auction site and it arrived today. I only had one vlb video card before that a tseng labs et4000/w32p and it is in my 486 33Mhz pc. Now I have a spare in case the one in there fails. Both of my cards have 2mb memory.

stealthpro.jpg

I wonder how compatibility and performance of the new card compares to the old tseng labs card.

S3 928 is older than ET4000/32p and it's slower both in DOS and Windows. But it's a good card none the less.

You know, Trident is always getting a bad wrap and most of the time deservedly so, but this little guy actually benched exactly the same as a Diamond Stealth 24 ISA card of mine and beat out quite a few of my other ISA VGA cards. Not bad from a Trident card.

how about Oak cards? 😁

schlang wrote:

how about Oak cards? 😁

Oak cards are great for a few types of games. They work great with point and click adventures for one. It really depends on what you are using them for. This particular model I benched came fairly close to that Diamond Stealth 24 ISA card. Not too shabby either.

That OAK card looks pretty good. How much video memory does it have on there?

bjwil1991 wrote:

That OAK card looks pretty good. How much video memory does it have on there?

Just a meg.

There are some nice ISA era Trident based cards for sure, never seen a good VLB Trdient though.

liqmat wrote:

schlang wrote:

how about Oak cards? 😁

Oak cards are great for a few types of games. They work great with point and click adventures for one. It really depends on what you are using them for. This particular model I benched came fairly close to that Diamond Stealth 24 ISA card. Not too shabby either.

OakOTI-087.JPG

That was my first ISA graphics card "Oak tech"
I later upgraded to a SVGA card I think it was a VLB Cirrus Logic or Trident. S3 are good too.
I would go with a SVGA card. Graphics are allot better than VGA.

badmojo wrote:

There are some nice ISA era Trident based cards for sure, never seen a good VLB Trdient though.

Funny you should mention that. I have two Cirrus Logic chip based VLB cards and a Trident chip based VLB card and both the Cirrus Logic VLB cards definitely outperform the Trident card, but not substantially.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

That was my first ISA graphics card "Oak tech"
I later upgraded to a SVGA card I think it was a VLB Cirrus Logic or Trident. S3 are good too.
I would go with a SVGA card. Graphics are allot better than VGA.

It all depends on what type of system you are trying to build. If it's a 386 system, like I am building shortly, I want to bench all my ISA cards. Probably that Oak card I showed above since most games on a 386 wont need more than that. If it's an early Pentium build, sure, SVGA might fit into that. SVGA really didn't get good performance, in my experience, until the mid 90s right before the 3D cards started coming to market. I remember MechWarrior 2 just barely getting by in SVGA on my Pentium 100.

Ah, Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428. My Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus has that integrated (VLB) onto the motherboard. Planning on upgrading the video memory to 2MB using the ZIP memory.

schlang wrote:

how about Oak cards? 😁

The only Oak card that I have (original from my first PC) is actually a lovely card, if not the fastest around (definitely not, even any Trident can run loops around around it).

It has both digital/TTL (9 pin) and analog/VGA (15 pin) outputs, switches to put it in hardware emulation modes like MDA/CGA/EGA, and it works both in 16 and 8 bit ISA slots.

It's the most versatile card I ever had.

tayyare wrote:

The only Oak card that I have (original from my first PC) is actually a lovely card, if not the fastest around (definitely not, […]
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schlang wrote:

how about Oak cards? 😁

The only Oak card that I have (original from my first PC) is actually a lovely card, if not the fastest around (definitely not, even any Trident can run loops around around it).

It has both digital/TTL (9 pin) and analog/VGA (15 pin) outputs, switches to put it in hardware emulation modes like MDA/CGA/EGA, and it works both in 16 and 8 bit ISA slots.

It's the most versatile card I ever had.

a10d2e14482eac124b8a83fcc99b.jpg

I think I have an earlier version of your card. Not familiar with the 9-pin digital VGA output personally.

Bought another AS/400 system for cheap. I really don’t have the space for another one, but the company that owned it was going to migrate and trash it. Can’t have any of that happening to such a gorgeous setup. So I bought it for about 5 usd 😀 Now to figure out where to put it...

liqmat wrote:

tayyare wrote:

The only Oak card that I have (original from my first PC) is actually a lovely card, if not the fastest around (definitely not, […]
Show full quote

schlang wrote:

how about Oak cards? 😁

The only Oak card that I have (original from my first PC) is actually a lovely card, if not the fastest around (definitely not, even any Trident can run loops around around it).

It has both digital/TTL (9 pin) and analog/VGA (15 pin) outputs, switches to put it in hardware emulation modes like MDA/CGA/EGA, and it works both in 16 and 8 bit ISA slots.

It's the most versatile card I ever had.

a10d2e14482eac124b8a83fcc99b.jpg

I think I have an earlier version of your card. Not familiar with the 9-pin digital VGA output personally.

oakcard.JPG

9 pin output is not VGA, it's for EGA/CGA/MDA monitors

tayyare wrote:

9 pin output is not VGA, it's for EGA/CGA/MDA monitors

Ah, I misread your first post. Sorry about that. I am familiar with 9-pin CGA/EGA.

liqmat wrote:

Funny you should mention that. I have two Cirrus Logic chip based VLB cards and a Trident chip based VLB card and both the Cirru […]
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badmojo wrote:

There are some nice ISA era Trident based cards for sure, never seen a good VLB Trdient though.

Funny you should mention that. I have two Cirrus Logic chip based VLB cards and a Trident chip based VLB card and both the Cirrus Logic VLB cards definitely outperform the Trident card, but not substantially.

cirrus.JPG

cirrus&trident.JPG

The Trident TGUI9400 CXi is good, the driver also provides GUI acceleration in Windows 3.11 IIRC.

Yes the 9400CXi is indeed a good chip