I remember the OAK cards, but I must admit the last one I saw was running in an ISA slot 
They were a real pain to program, their register set was screwed up.
They were a real pain to program, their register set was screwed up.
Weirdest actual 3D card for PC's
- Thread starter DeanoC
- Start date
DemoCoder said:
Did the Virge at least have Z buffer support? I always felt that this was a major drawback with software renders. A Z-calculate, buffer read, compare and write took up too many cycles to justify in software. Especially when compared with a non textured triangle.
I did find it quite nice that my S3 Trio64 was faster than a friend's Virge though.
Neutrality
Newcomer
Dio said:
Wasnt that the card with some from of "free" FSAA?? I remember reading a preview of that card a few years ago.
-Neutrality-
A couple more that I've remembered.
Real3D Starfighter, based on a I740 which could only texture from AGP but not from local video card RAM (weird choice to start with) but it gets better. Real3D wanted to support textureing from local video RAM so the added a 'fake' AGP interface to the video card. The chip just accessed the local video card RAM as if it was over the AGP bus!
Number Nine Ticket To Ride, didn't this have a programmable core? (FPGA). The chip would reconfigure the FPGA to do the exact pixel op required. The problems were A) it was slower than dedicated hardware and B) the drivers never managed to program the FPGA properly.
Real3D Starfighter, based on a I740 which could only texture from AGP but not from local video card RAM (weird choice to start with) but it gets better. Real3D wanted to support textureing from local video RAM so the added a 'fake' AGP interface to the video card. The chip just accessed the local video card RAM as if it was over the AGP bus!
Number Nine Ticket To Ride, didn't this have a programmable core? (FPGA). The chip would reconfigure the FPGA to do the exact pixel op required. The problems were A) it was slower than dedicated hardware and B) the drivers never managed to program the FPGA properly.
Hi!
Been lurkin' around for quite some time and couldn't resist this thread...
I vote for Jazz Multimedia's Bonnie & Clyde (V2200) which has both an AGP and a PCI connector on each side of the PCB.
Can't find any pics of it , only this article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2067861,00.html
Been lurkin' around for quite some time and couldn't resist this thread...
I vote for Jazz Multimedia's Bonnie & Clyde (V2200) which has both an AGP and a PCI connector on each side of the PCB.
Can't find any pics of it , only this article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2067861,00.html
CI said:Hi!
Been lurkin' around for quite some time and couldn't resist this thread...
I vote for Jazz Multimedia's Bonnie & Clyde (V2200) which has both an AGP and a PCI connector on each side of the PCB.
Can't find any pics of it , only this article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2067861,00.html
That is oddball.
Actually at the time that wasn't as daft as it sounds. They picked a VRAM bus that they would saturate at Z+color (probably 64 bits) and with the low memory clocks available, the AGP bus had about half the bandwidth of the VRAM bus, all you needed was the latency compensation. The result was that the texture memory reads were in theory free.DeanoC said:
Several other chips were frequently faster texturing out of AGP because of the 'free bandwidth' factor - most of the (Savage3D and on) S3 chips, for example.
It's not like nowadays where the VRAM bus has an order of magnitude more bandwidth than AGP.
Dio said:
Darn! The only pic I can find is on my June '98 issue (pg.78 ) of Boot (now MaximumPC) magazine. Searching through google only turns up bits and pieces. None of the bigger h/w review sites have it either.
Another link (still no pic):
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,7203,pg,22,00.asp
Ah.. but you don't usually see such layouts for PCs.
arjan de lumens
Veteran
The VESA local bus never appeared alone, but always as an extension of the ISA bus, which is apparent from both add-in boards and motherboards (in most 486-class PCs) that supported the bus.
Neutrality
Newcomer
CI said:Now I think I'm getting confused... I mean that one doesn't usually see a video card with AGP on one edge and PCI on the other for PC platform. Do you mean there's similar cards with VLB and ISA connectors on each edge???
Dont worry, Simon F misunderstood your post.
-Neutrality-
arjan de lumens
Veteran
Here is a card with VLB and ISA bus:
The VLB bus is on the left third of the board.
And a (presumably 486) motherboard with 3 VLB slots, off the end of their associated ISA slots:
The VLB bus is on the left third of the board.
And a (presumably 486) motherboard with 3 VLB slots, off the end of their associated ISA slots:
Joe DeFuria
Legend
I guess I should throw in the Chromatic Research MPact / MPact2 Media processor. Not really "odd-ball" per-say, but an attempt at a more "flexible" approach to media processing in general: 3D graphics...and sound...and video...and telephony...
http://www.beart.org.uk/Resume%202002/Talks/sub$1K/sld001.htm
http://www.beart.org.uk/Resume%202002/Talks/sub$1K/sld001.htm
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