ET4000 chips don't have an integrated RAMDAC. Perhaps the RAMDAC on the card (no idea which one of the chips it is) is only capable of 8-bit output? You could check the chips and research the labels to find out which one is the RAMDAC and what its specs are. For DOS games this shouldn't matter, though.

A dump of the video BIOS might give a hint. It does not look like the card has a high-color DAC (there are three video DACs, no datasheets available for them, the additional two must be related to the composite outputs).

That is a pretty high end card for an ISA rig but you might be limited to 256 for the long haul unless you find the right driver. Try the card in dos and go from there to see how well it runs.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/132328
.

The card has 1 megabyte.

nforce4max wrote:

That is a pretty high end card for an ISA rig but you might be limited to 256 for the long haul unless you find the right driver. Try the card in dos and go from there to see how well it runs.

Thanks for the replies guys 😀 how could I test it under DOS? Is there some kind of benchie which pushes it to the max? Games run fine of course, thats not the issue here. The problem im facing is that i cant find any win95 drivers for it, because the et4000ax driver is built right in the OS. So when I try to switch to high color mode, I simply receive an error, that the settings couldn't be applied.

You could probably try Scitech Display Doctor and see if it reports or produces any driver of use.

Have you tried an FCC-ID lookup?
That had given me a lot of hints to get on with more specific searching.
When dealing with old nameless hardware.

Use the tool whatvga to test high-color modes. It can detect the DAC. But likely you don't have a high color DAC.

You can check for offers like this to upgrade:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Sierra-Semiconductors- … C-/131365223920

Hi Guys!

Thank you for the replies 😀 I tried to run GTA with this card in DOS mode, and it turned out that my RAMDAC is only 8bit capable, so I need to get another VGA card if I want Hi Color.

I bought a Cirrus Logic VLB video card (type: CL-GD5428) and now I have higher framerate, and playable performance in DOOM 2 and Duke Nukem 3D.
I also managed to overclock my 50MHz CPU to 66MHz by some jumper tinkering.

Some games like Indycar 2, GTA 1, Fatal Racing, Destruction Derby are still unplayably slow. I have 12MB RAM. Is this because that these games are from the early Pentium era and a 486CPU (even a DX4-100, 120) would just not cut it? My board supports external cache, I'm thinking about going for 16K and another 1MB (making it 2MB) for my Cirrus graphics card.

Those games are Pentium era, although Indycar 2 minimum requirements are 486 33mhz. Try 320x200, if still jerky You need a faster cpu.
F1GP should work smoothly on that though.
SVGA 3d games are out. As an example Duke Nukem 3d runs smoothly on my 486-133mhz, but jerky with an Intel dx2-66.

For older Dos games, like Wing Commander, turning off cpu or motherboard cache helps.

Fatal Racing (aka Whiplash) is really tough on 486 VLB systems (even though minimum requirements are a 486 DX2-66 and 8mb of RAM). A Pentium with PCI video would be a much better choice.

According to the manual, to give your 486 a fighting chance go to Configuration/GFX Detail, make sure display is set to VGA, change Look Ahead to Restricted, and use the +/- keys to increase/decrease screen size. A faster CPU might help if the game is still too slow, but otherwise that's all you can do.

Fatal Racing is totally unplayable even on minimum settings where the cars are just colored rectangles. Ew.
I bought an AMD Am486DX4-100 CPU for about £1 but the problem is that my mobo detects it as a DX, and it doesn't work properely. I need to upgrade the BIOS. Are there any known good sources for old BIOSes?
This line of DEC PCs came out with either a 486DX/DX2 or a Pentium60/66 so I know I might be out of luck.

For Dos (Test) you should go for the ET4k Vesa-Driver and after that you can use "vesainfo" in order to see,
if there are any supported true or highcolor modes. After that i alway test them with PCX-Gfx an
Qview1.03.