Auction: ATI Mach32 f. IBM PS/2 Microchannel MCA Bus with 2MB Video Memory

[Carsten Lyng]

Saw this one on Ebay....What a price..OMG

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276022636712

[Ryan Alswede]

It's just money, you can print / make more.

[Bradley Nuckols]

On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 6:58:13 AM UTC-6, Ryan Alswede wrote:
> It's just money, you can print / make more.

WAY overpriced already. Maybe if it was in a sealed box could you justify that price, but you have to be one of those rich crazy collectors to even consider that.

Also isnt the mach32 a poor performance card? Is the appeal here just because its 3rd party?

[Louis Ohland]

The ATi GUP can do 1024x768 @64k colors, doesn't require DOS drivers and
works on WfW, OS2, W9x, NT 4.

So it may not be a rippin' awesome video card, but curbstomps XGA and XGA-2.

[Christian Holzapfel]

...and it's the only one with DirectX (DirectDraw, not Direct3D) support.

So together with the new availability of ChipChats, it may be a late gamer's dawning on Micro Channel - finally.
https://www.cognitoforms.com/vintech2/chatchipreloadedexpressionofinterest/

[Ryan Alswede]

You mention the Windows 2000 beta. What was the last build number of the beta that supported MCA?

https://archive.org/details/5.00.2092.1/Windows2000-5.0.1796-Desktop.png

[IBMMuseum]

> You mention the Windows 2000 beta. What was the last build number of the beta that supported MCA?

Beta 2 - All MCA (and EISA) support was dropped by Beta 3.

[Ryan Alswede]

> Beta 2 - All MCA (and EISA) support was dropped by Beta 3.

Cool thanks, That would be build 1877. I'll give a try on my Model 90 P60

[Christian Holzapfel]

Ryan Alswede schrieb am Freitag, 8. September 2023 um 19:10:21 UTC+2:
> > Beta 2 - All MCA (and EISA) support was dropped by Beta 3.
> Cool thanks, That would be build 1877. I'll give a try on my Model 90 P60

I used Beta 2 build 1911 with MCA.

[Bradley Nuckols]

On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 3:14:49 AM UTC-6, Carsten Lyng wrote:
> Saw this one on Ebay....What a price..OMG
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/276022636712

And it sold for 1600 euros... wow that was a lot more than what I was expecting...

[Christian Holzapfel]

Bradley Nuckols schrieb am Samstag, 9. September 2023 um 20:15:11 UTC+2:
> And it sold for 1600 euros... wow that was a lot more than what I was expecting...

Did I ever mention that cloning these buddies might be a good idea?

[lharr...@gmail.com]

Hell yea! Do it!!!! lolol

[Christian Holzapfel]

lharr...@gmail.com schrieb am Mittwoch, 13. September 2023 um 13:32:33 UTC+2:
> Hell yea! Do it!!!! lolol

As I mentioned in the PS/2 Facebook group, it would be certainly possible, with only a few (quite expensive) difficulties to overcome "somehow":
- I would need one fully functional card to take its 7 GAL logic chips off and send them in for breaking their security mechanisms and read-out
- Demystifying the 7 GALs by my trusty contact requires around $ 2700 to be spent, and I don't consider cancelling my pension plan for this alone
- A defect card would be *very* helpful to desolder almost all components to get a clear view on the naked PCB for reverse engineering

I still don't know whether the PCB is 2- or 4-layered, and if there are traces on the inner layers, which would make reverse engineering very hard.
Some detailed, high-res pictures would be required at an early stage.

I looked into the bill of materials, and it seems all components could still be acquired, including the GPU, VRAM and RAMDAC.
Assembly would still be expensive from the pure manufacturing cost, probably not under $ 500 for PCB and components.

My initial suggestion was doing some kind of crowdfunding to accomplish the GAL copies, and then giving donors the opportunity to buy a card for the manufacturing cost. Would still be like $ 500 per donation and $500 for the card, so if that doesn't raise any thumbs up, I fully understand. It's still a crazy venture.

In the end, it's only time and money, and I already volunteered for the time...

[Louis Ohland]

Um, like "The Six Million Dollar Man", "we can rebuild him"

But why? The ATI GUP was a happening card for the time, but it smacks
into 1,024x768. How many current monitors go that small on the screen
>natively< ?

So the GUP might serve as a basis for a current adapter implementation,
but should it be replicated?

[Christian Holzapfel]

> But why? The ATI GUP was a happening card for the time, but it smacks
> into 1,024x768. How many current monitors go that small on the screen
> >natively< ?

Maybe, but what video adapter are you using then on your favorite Micro Channel boxes?
My vision is (and sometimes I have a strange mind) enabling everyone playing with the top-of-the-line video card of that time on vintage systems, finally getting high color on 1024 pixels with DirectX support. Something the XGA2 cannot give us today.
If you still play around with MCA, your probably down to 800x600 right now.

> So the GUP might serve as a basis for a current adapter implementation,
> but should it be replicated?

Why would you want a modern GeForce or anything on MCA? Think of the drivers for Win3.x/95/OS2 alone.
The GUP only comes in range because it's 30 years old technology, and technology has progressed in a way that an "anyone" could rebuild it at home without extraordinary equipment. Soldering a PGA-208 is fine for me today, but a BGA-960 maybe not.

[Bradley Nuckols]

I'd actually be interested in a VOODOO 1 card for the later MCA machines. obviously it would only be practical on the very late 486 and the pentium MCA rigs, but that seems to be an easier goal than a complete video card. As I understand it, the VOODOO is little more than a voltage regulator, a pack of ram chips and the actual TMU/Ramdac/frame buffer voodoo chips.

[Ryan Alswede]

> I'd actually be interested in a VOODOO 1 card for the later MCA machines.

Do you have device driver source code or a driver on MCA for that? That's the road block on most of these projects.

[Bradley Nuckols]

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 6:44:54 AM UTC-6, Ryan Alswede wrote:
> > I'd actually be interested in a VOODOO 1 card for the later MCA machines.
> Do you have device driver source code or a driver on MCA for that? That's the road block on most of these projects.

if I did, i'd obviously be making my own. however I was under the impression the voodoo 1 did not really use drivers, at least in the common sense, as the game would talk directly to the card. Obviously there is some software needed. I haven't looked in depth, but i'd wager the 3dfx/voodoo community already has people that know the V1 drivers, and making the modifications would be RELATIVLY trivial compared to starting from scratch for other cards.

all i'm saying is, in my uneducated opinion, a voodoo1 would be most likely be easier than most other video cards. It has a huge community who have already dabbled in new cards, driver fixes, etc. So more people would want a finished product in the end as well.

[Ryan Alswede]

>> as the game would talk directly to the card.

The game would have been written to talk to a non-MCA bus based card so would probably never work or just crash.

You would need IBM's bridge chip ASIC-9060R to even get resources to the PCI based chipset.

[Bradley Nuckols]

I mean, isnt it all just a pipe dream at the end of the day?

[Ryan Alswede]

> I mean, isnt it all just a pipe dream at the end of the day?

Snark Barker MCA
Chip Chat Reloaded
TexElec Resound New Wave
TexElec Resound 2 OPL3 Adlib
---
Nope. Copies of rare cards are no longer pipe dreams.

I could totally see a ATI Graphics Ultra Pro OR Cirrus Logic GD542x SVGA with 2MB implemented being done by Christian Holzapfel. These two cards are well supported by Windows 9x/NT

[lharr...@gmail.com]

How fast is the GUP vs the Cirrus Logic GD542x? The GUP being a Mach32 has some directx support doesn't it?