Video card memory lane

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Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Amazing to think how underpowered yet how impressive this little thing was:

Trident ISA 1MB
TridentSVGAVideoCd.jpg



I have the full size one in my closet still, about 2x as large as that. Remember I did the bios update once to make it support 1024x768 resolution.
 
Remember VESA video cards, that were ISA and a special PCI style connector after the ISA slot?

I had a Trident that was a VESA card!
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Those VESA video cards only used the ISA portion of the slot for power and maybe the BIOS interface.

Those were annoying because the length of the card caused them to pop out of the VESA extension sometimes when the computer was moved.

I had a BusLogic VESA SCSI adapter (as well as a Triden TGUI9440 VESA video card). In fact I think I know where both of them are.

There were also VESA Ethernet adapters, but only one company ever made them that I knew of (that was Boca Research).
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
S3 was cool, the first accelerated 2D graphics, wow.
Voodoo was awesome, but didn't help other than games back then.


Well, it had a "desktop acceleration" option in the Control Panel for it, but I'm not sure about how useful it actually was.
 
Originally Posted By: brianl703
Those VESA video cards only used the ISA portion of the slot for power and maybe the BIOS interface.

Those were annoying because the length of the card caused them to pop out of the VESA extension sometimes when the computer was moved.

I had a BusLogic VESA SCSI adapter (as well as a Triden TGUI9440 VESA video card). In fact I think I know where both of them are.

There were also VESA Ethernet adapters, but only one company ever made them that I knew of (that was Boca Research).



3COM made a VESA NIC! The 3C509 IIRC.......
 
Originally Posted By: StevieC
I had a Boca Sound card, Modem all in one VESA card too. And I agree they were a PITA because they kept popping out.
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I hated those [censored] software modem/fax/soundcard things..... Biggest PITA to find drivers for.
 
Yup, To get it to work under Windows 95, you had to install Windows 3.1 first, the drivers and then do an upgrade and run a patch that some chinese guy wrote so it would work. You still had to change the volume in a DOS box with an application because the windows GUI speaker thingy didn't work with it. Was a POS and I was happy when I got rid of it for my Creative Labs 64 bit PCI card
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Originally Posted By: StevieC
Yup, To get it to work under Windows 95, you had to install Windows 3.1 first, the drivers and then do an upgrade and run a patch that some chinese guy wrote so it would work. You still had to change the volume in a DOS box with an application because the windows GUI speaker thingy didn't work with it. Was a POS and I was happy when I got rid of it for my Creative Labs 64 bit PCI card
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AWE64?

I had an original SB16 with a SIMM slot on it!

Remember the ones with the CD-ROM hookup for the "proprietary" Creative CD-ROM drives?
 
It was an 32 I think, and I think I bought the optional Daughter board that had a ribbon cable connected between the two cards, but I can't remember if it was mine or a friends...

Speaking of CD-Roms I had a Mitsumi single speed that you pushed in and then pulled out the drawer, lifted the lid and put the CD in. Then you closed it and pushed it back in. It had it's own controller card and wouldn't work hooked up to my SB-16 because the SB-16 I/O only went as high as 240H in address space and my Mitsumi wanted to use 330H or something...

I hated it because between these 2 cards and my video card, modem and IDE controller card I had no room for my network card so I had to use a null modem cable between this computer and my 486 and use Norton Commander to transfer files back and forth at 9600 baud.
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Those were the days!
 
remember setting jumpers to make anything compatible?

Remember when CD-R were only SCSI and really expensive?

I think the first computer I built had an ATI Rage Pro AGP.
 
Originally Posted By: StevieC


Speaking of CD-Roms I had a Mitsumi single speed that you pushed in and then pulled out the drawer, lifted the lid and put the CD in. Then you closed it and pushed it back in. It had it's own controller card and wouldn't work hooked up to my SB-16 because the SB-16 I/O only went as high as 240H in address space and my Mitsumi wanted to use 330H or something...


I bought the same 1x CD Drive to install in my Compaq 386/DX 25mhz machine. Oh the fun of a dedicated card for the CD drive.

Installing OS/2 2.1 took FOREVER with that 1X CD-Drive.

I don't remember which took longer, installing OS/2 with that CD-ROM drive or installing Win95 beta from floppy.
 
Originally Posted By: StevieC
It was an 32 I think, and I think I bought the optional Daughter board that had a ribbon cable connected between the two cards, but I can't remember if it was mine or a friends...

Speaking of CD-Roms I had a Mitsumi single speed that you pushed in and then pulled out the drawer, lifted the lid and put the CD in. Then you closed it and pushed it back in. It had it's own controller card and wouldn't work hooked up to my SB-16 because the SB-16 I/O only went as high as 240H in address space and my Mitsumi wanted to use 330H or something...

I hated it because between these 2 cards and my video card, modem and IDE controller card I had no room for my network card so I had to use a null modem cable between this computer and my 486 and use Norton Commander to transfer files back and forth at 9600 baud.
37.gif


LOL.gif
Those were the days!


LMAO!

My favourite component (or one of them) from that time period were the Pioneer "Disc Changer" drives, which would hold 6CD's IIRC...... They are really cool for things like Encarta......

I had an old SONY external SCSI 1x CD-ROM that was top-load, and almost the size of a laptop
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Yeah my dads friend who used to run a BBS had a few of them that he wrote special code so his PC-Board BBS software could choose the disc and copy the file to temporary hard disk space to be downloaded. His BBS was called "The Exchange" and he was friends with the guy that ran the BBS called "Westonia"

Westonia was also my first ISP, as they would allow you to login through the BBS and using a C-Slip script and winsock you could connect to the internet at 2400 baud! hahahaha
grin2.gif


I miss those days... and I miss my rock solid 14" Super-VGA Darius monitor that could do 800x600 interlaced resolution. Too bad my video card couldn't.

I also miss my Star NX-1020 Colour dot matrix printer with the multi-colour ribon, I remember printing all kinds of stuff in Print Shop!

hahaha
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Originally Posted By: tom slick
remember setting jumpers to make anything compatible?

Remember when CD-R were only SCSI and really expensive?

I think the first computer I built had an ATI Rage Pro AGP.


Yup, IRQ, DMA, and IO address.

I seriously think that those of us grew up with these manual settings end up being better computer engineers than the younger ones that didn't know what we were talking about.
 
Remember running out of available IRQ's or DMA's for devices? I remember setting my modem wrong and every time I would connect to a BBS, my mouse would freeze, or it wouldn't load anything in the terminal program after being connected unless I moved the mouse. hahahaha
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Not like Virtual IRQ's today.

I agree with PandaBear, it made better technical folk out of us I'm sure.
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Also remember having to enter in the Sectors, Cylinders, and Heads for IDE hard drives. 1024, 16, 63 I think was for a 512mb hard drive. and was the maximum before using LBA or software to break the barrier. I had a seagate 540mb and I had to use their software to see the correct drive size.
 
Originally Posted By: StevieC
Remember running out of available IRQ's or DMA's for devices? I remember setting my modem wrong and every time I would connect to a BBS, my mouse would freeze, or it wouldn't load anything in the terminal program after being connected unless I moved the mouse. hahahaha
LOL.gif


Not like Virtual IRQ's today.

I agree with PandaBear, it made better technical folk out of us I'm sure.
wink.gif


Also remember having to enter in the Sectors, Cylinders, and Heads for IDE hard drives. 1024, 16, 63 I think was for a 512mb hard drive. and was the maximum before using LBA or software to break the barrier. I had a seagate 540mb and I had to use their software to see the correct drive size.


OH yeah!!!! My SB16 had them too. I had DMA-mapping issues with my IDE adapter for my 4x CD-ROM
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ProComm for DOS was waaaaaay better than it's Windows 3.1 counterpart.

Anyone use PC Geos "OS" Ensemble?

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This thing was oodles faster than Windows 3.x and worked very well as a GUI layer on top of DOS.
 
I used both Procomm for windows & dos, but then a friend switched me over to Q-MODEM I think it was called for dos, and it was way better and easier to use IMO.

Procomm had a habit of disconnecting me for no reason in the windows version, but that may have been a problem with my modem, can't remember
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Remember Lantastic for networking?
 
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