Introduction
I am testing an Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 plus 1MB VLB VGA card. Underneath the card's Orchid sticker, is an S3 "S3C805" chip. This card can be upgraded to 2MB. The chips onboard have a NS speed rating of 50. That's quite fast, but unfortunately the card is very slow. I think it's an early VLB design. I don't think it's worth upgrading this card to 2MB. I am guessing, but I don't think a memory upgrade will speed it up, either in DOS or in Windows. I think it would just allow you to pick higher screen resolutions in Windows 3. It does have one good feature however. The general image quality is good, not blurry.

1) Link to the Windows 3 driver. Filename is FAH60.ZIP.
2) Link to the update for the driver listed above. Filename is FAH601U.ZIP.
3) Link to the VESA TSR for BIOS revisions 1 and 2, however see note 3 below. Filename is 1280VESA.ZIP.
4) Link to benchmark test data, including this Orchid VGA card.
5) Link to the stason webpage, showing the schematic diagram of this card.
6) Link to a later Windows 3 driver, version 7.2 - but see note 6 below! Filename is FPLUS.EXE.

Notes
1) In an attempt to get some more speed out of this card, I also tried a "flat memory model" S3C805 driver package, version 2.21. It's here. However, WinTune 2.0 tests in Windows 3.11 (wfwg) showed that this driver was a fraction slower than the Orchid version 6 driver release, listed above.

2) You could save yourself some time, and integrate this update in to the install files found in the download link #1 above.

3) Doesn't work if you are using an LCD, because the frequency used is not LCD friendly.

4) Benchmark test data shows that this 1MB card is slow. Please see the image below, which is taken from this webpage.

5) Says that if you are using a 50MHz 486, then jumper JP1 needs to be set so that the IRQ 2/9 setting is enabled. Is that to help with stability, I wonder?

6) The readme says that this driver will only work for a 1280 Plus card that has a BIOS revision 3 chip. Mine doesn't, and so this has not been tested. I would like to upgrade my BIOS to version 3, but the chances of finding this chip are low.

Benchmark test data, showing how slow the card is. Full details can be seen here.

Benchmarks
I ran Doom -timedemo demo3, in full screen mode. For my test system, which is using an AMD 5x86 @ 133MHz, I get 2083 realtics. I replaced the Orchid card with another S3 805 card. This one was manufactured by DEC, and it has 1MB of 60NS RAM onboard. I get a score of 1806 realtics. Finally, I replaced the DEC card with an STB 2MB LightSpeed (Tseng ET4000/W32P) card and reran this test. I get a score of 1693 realtics. This quick test makes the Orchid card look slow. I wonder what it could be useful for? Slideshows? 😉

The card
Looks like they reused an older PCB design. I think one of Orchid's older models was called "VA". I am guessing that this was their "Voice Activated" video card.