Uncreative Labs

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

It seems that the ARK1000 chipset was available for VLB, but the ARK2000 chipset was not. Though, I heard that their DOS performance is quite similar. But, like the ET4000W32P it uses memory interleaving, so you will take a big performance hit unless 2MB is installed.

I've been looking for one of these on Ebay for a while. They don't pop up that often anymore I think. This one is generic brand "2THEMAX". I would have preferred the Hercules or Octek version, but this will do for now. It comes with just 1MB installed, but there are empty SOJ sockets to expand to 2MB.

I'm still not really sure what a good graphics testbed is for DOS. I think maybe VIDSPEED is the way to go. But, usually when I test I like to run a DOS extender game in 640x480x256. Testing on my 5x86 system, the ET4000W32P has proven to be the fastest chip. But, I am really curious to see the results of running the TSENG in my VLB P133. The S3-964 and 968 are slower than the TSENG in the 486, but they seem mch faster in the Pentium.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

It all depends on the resollution and color depth plus the task.

BTW Tseng ET6000 PCI cards with 4MB rock for DOS, so do the Nvidia Riva128 PCI cards.

Was the 2themax on ebay BIN for ages?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I was supposed to buy a nice Octek ARK1000 card from a seller in China for really cheap, but he seemed to have lost it, and told me that he would let me know if he ever found it. The the 2themax card on BIN was quite a bit more expensive, and I had been contemplating buying it for some time. I gave the chinese seller a few months and he came up empty handed, so I was lucky that the one on eBay was still there. I'm really surprised nobody else bought it.

I've also been meaning to pickup an ET6000 for a really long time. A few years back those were cheap and plentiful, and I was really stupid not to load up on some. I have some MDRAM chips sitting around, so if I ever find one I'll be ready to upgrade to 4MB. I'm hoping to find an STB Lightspeed or a Hercules Dynamite 128.

Are the Riva128 cards really that good? I really hated them when they were new, but at the time I was judging them by 3D capabilities and support rather than DOS VGA.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

For DOS they are great, just stay away from the AGP variety they have bugs. Nice VESA capabilities.

My ET6000 is 4MB (STB lightspeed I think), it was cheap years ago. Have been looking for the rare ET6100 but no luck (better RAMDAC among other little things). I think they are 4.25MB or something like that, not a round number.

I was eyeing one of the ARK cards on ebay, but my setups work just fine currently and I have been dumping money into my Mac 68K video editing collection. Out of curiosity are there any mountains of Nubus era cards in China?

Snagged a Nvidia Geforce 1 DDR I wanted a while ago and found out it only likes AGP 4x slots (more upgrades). This is starting to be a good time to collect the TNT and early Geforce cards since they are going for nothing. You have to grab them when they are at the most worthless point. I rarely see VLB cards on ebay these days, and they are not $.99 anymore either.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Yeah, I forget exactly why the ET6000 has that extra 256k of RAM. I think it might be integrated into the GPU. I remember reading about it a while back, but I've since forgotten. I didn't know that the ET6100 was considered rare. I thought they were fairly common at some point, but it looks like I'm going to have a hell of a time finding one now.

I haven't seen any nubus cards in China yet, but I guarantee you they are here somewhere. Infact, I have been told there is an entire city near by that is dedicated to recycling old circuit boards imported from the west. I hear it's a really disgusting place to be because of the pollution. I have pretty serious allergies, but I'm still tempted to go there.

I never really liked the nVidia cards. I always like 3dfx, and nvidia was the evil empire. Not to mention most of the people I disliked used nVidia as well. I think at one point I had an nVidia Geforce2, and I really disliked it because it was unable to reproduce colour properly...though this was before DVI was common.

I don't know what my problem is. I always wait until it is too late to start collecting things. I usually look on ebay and see all the cheap stuff, and I say "meh, no hurry. That stuff will be around for a while". By the time I actually get around to seriously wanting it, all the good stuff is picked over, in the trash or really expensive.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I have to quit staying up so late.

3dfx cards are nice. I own a Voodoo 1, 2x 12MB Voodoo 2 SLI, spare Voodoo 2 8MB, Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, Voodoo 3 3500 AGP (nice tv tuner and FM tuner plus the breakout box for video in/out), and my boxed Voodoo 5500 AGP.

I have a few Early ATI AIW cards and the 9000 in this box, and some Nvidia ones (TNT1, TNT2 Ultra, Geforce 1 DDR).

Getting back to Nubus cards, I should have 100 or so around here of all kinds (plenty in use too).

I collect a few different platforms, and seem to keep looking untill I find something I like and it is a deal. I was looking for an old Supermac DigitalFilm card and breakout box since 2003, snagged one a month or so ago. Like anything else finding one item leads me to more from the same seller, I tend to ask questions and in return find hardware and software people would normally throw out that I want badly. For example I had a matrox Rainbow Runner video capture card for a while (snagged them in 2001 or so when they were alomost free new in the box), I was talking to a bunch of Amiga people about toasters and one mentioned he had a Matrox setup like mine he was going to trash, but he had the extra TV tuner card and sent me the whole setup (was looking for that tuner card a long time too). You find stuff in the wierdest places owned by people who you would guess never heard of it let alone used it. I will keep an item in the back of my mind for years untill I run across it looking for something else and snag it.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

The reason for 2.25mb on a graphics card was that was exactly how much memory you needed for 1024x768x24bit depth my assumption would be that the card came with 2.25 and once expanded ended up with an odd number

None of the 1280 modes or 1600 line modes fit evenly so that is the only guess I have.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

One thing I missed in the auction for the ARK1000VL card was that the user said he had difficulty with the card at high bus speeds. I am planning to run at 40MHz, and I expect to have problems.

I noticed that the card is using 70ns memory, which seems to be a tad slow. My ET4000W32p is using 50ns memory. Do you think replacing the memory with 50ns parts would help at all?

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

should help it a little if your useing faster memory, but probbly wont be a huge leap though

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Anonymous Coward wrote:

One thing I missed in the auction for the ARK1000VL card was that the user said he had difficulty with the card at high bus speeds. I am planning to run at 40MHz, and I expect to have problems.

I noticed that the card is using 70ns memory, which seems to be a tad slow. My ET4000W32p is using 50ns memory. Do you think replacing the memory with 50ns parts would help at all?

70ns is really only good up to about 25mhz (depending on wait states) so I would guess 50ns could not hurt but it really depends if its the chipset causing instability or the ram itself, no way of telling without trying I guess.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

70ns is good for up to 25MHz IF you are using a 0WS system. However, most people who run 386 and 486 systems use at least 1 waitstate making 70ns RAM good up to at least 40MHz.

But, this may not even be an issue with graphics cards, because they likely supply their own clock crystals. I have no idea what frequency the RAM operates at on this particular card and if running the VLB at 50MHz would even affect it.

I thought that changing the 70ns memory might be a good idea since my Hercules Dynamite Power (another high end memory interleaved DRAM card) has 45 or 50ns DRAMs!!! But, the other day I found an image of the PCI version of a Hercules Stingray Pro which also uses the ARK1000 chipset, and I noticed that it too uses 70ns memory. So, perhaps using faster memory would not even make a difference. Hercules had a pretty good reputation for making pretty good quality cards, and my guess would be if the ARK1000 chipset could have benefitted from faster RAM they definetly would have done it.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I picked up a card with ET6100 chipset on ebay a few days ago. It is made by a company called "Integral" and it looks like it has the ViPER6100 chip on it as well. I don't think I've seen too many cards that have the ViPER chips on them. It should be interesting to play with.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

So its a video card and capture card?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I'm not really sure. I was able to dig up this information:

"Tseng currently offers OEM reference designs based on the ET6100 and VPR6100 that provide TV-in-a-window with on-board TV tuner and TV-out capabilities using a discrete PAL/NTSC encoder, and is working with third parties to create turn-key solutions offering additional features such as high-quality DVD playback and Broadcast PC support."

So, it seems that it provides a TV tuner and TV out. I would assume that it also has capture abilities. I think you have a MIRO card with the VPR4000 chipset. I would imagine the capabilities to be similar.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

My tseng et4000 VLB card has a viper chip on it for A/V in and TV tuner, figured it was the same.

Have a link to the ebay auction (does it have a picture)?