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Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 2:07 pm
by nzoomed
Ive got a whole bunch of VESA Local Bus graphics cards, mostly trident and cirrus logic chipsets, but ive found one with a Tseng Labs ET4000AX chipset.

I read alot of negative stuff on the Vogon's forum about Trident and to stay away from their crappy cards, and i see that the ET4000 was a very popular chip.

Since these predate mostly before my time when i got into computers, I would like to know what is a good chip, and whether or not the trident chips deserve the negativity they seem to get, as i thought they were a rather good chip.

Is there any better cards i should look out for?

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 7:15 pm
by LS120
one of the best cards i ever run in a pc was a Tseng-labs ET4000, i even had an ISA version years ago.. way beter than the Cirrus.. but the trident was ok as well but for me the ET4000 was way better
and faster

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 7:39 pm
by nzoomed
LS120 wrote:one of the best cards i ever run in a pc was a Tseng-labs ET4000, i even had an ISA version years ago.. way beter than the Cirrus.. but the trident was ok as well but for me the ET4000 was way better
and faster

OK, sounds good, I believe its possible that the ET4000 can run 16 bit colour at 800x600 if the card has 1MB or more of memory - this i need to check, it takes DIP memory on the card.

Im interested to see what games i should be able to run on this card, probably too old for descent and terminal velocity which seem to be optimized for PCI graphics such as S3 virge etc.

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:15 am
by LS120
i just found 2 pci s3 verge on Friday... but with 1-meg i think it played ok..

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 11:09 am
by nzoomed
LS120 wrote:i just found 2 pci s3 verge on Friday... but with 1-meg i think it played ok..


Ive got one here too that i upgraded to 4MB by pulling the chips off another card.

I really need a pentium system i guess if im going to play these later dosgames.

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 5:49 pm
by LS120
maybe but a good 486dx 4-100 would run real well.. and compared to a p90 are just as good.. with a pci 486 board.. if you do get an intel chip as amd were not as good and over rated in my view..

yeah i have also un-earthed some UMC and C3 cpus also.. oh and a few 386 copros

Re: Best VL bus graphics card?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:05 pm
by nzoomed
LS120 wrote:maybe but a good 486dx 4-100 would run real well.. and compared to a p90 are just as good.. with a pci 486 board.. if you do get an intel chip as amd were not as good and over rated in my view..

yeah i have also un-earthed some UMC and C3 cpus also.. oh and a few 386 copros


OK, sweet, I think I can run a DX4-100 on this board of mine. I was intending to install a DX2-66 on it though.

I see in such games as terminal velocity that it allows "pentium" graphics in the option, i really dont know if this is necessary or not for a pentium, but if it can run well on my system, i would be quite happy.

Speaking of 386 boards, i have got a board called a CACHE 32A, its supposed to come with a memory board that takes DIP memory, so without the board, its useless.

Whats unique about my board is it has a 385 memory controller in addition to the 387 co-processor.