Nowadays video cards are almost super computers. If they do not drive on your screen, they will decode videos, crunching physics models or process them with large language algorithms. But it wasn’t always like that. The old video cards were simply simple. As soon as PCs won more advanced buses, video cards got a little better. But hardware gear on an old-fashioned VGA card would not be worth the cheapest burner telephone in the Big Box store. Not to mention the fact that the card is probably twice as large as the phone. [Bits and Bolts] Take a look at various old maps, including a PCI version of the Tseng et4000state-of-the-art of the late 1990s.
You may think that is a printing error. Most older Tseng boards were Isa, but apparently there were some with the PCI bus or the older Vesa local bus. Acceleration usually meant special hardware here for handling BITBLT and perhaps a hardware course.
It is nice to see him test these old cards and also work under the microscope. Because the PCI bus was new when this board was introduced, it apparently had some bugs that made it incompatible with certain motherboards.
We remember that we are being blown away by the color images that these boards offered when they were new. Now of course you would not see images like this, not even on a cheap video game. Still nice to take a walk through the memory strip with these old boards.
[Bits and Bolts] definitely has a hobby. We think it is great that this high-tech was in their time, but now designing a VGA card is well within reach for anyone who is skilled in using FPGAs.
#walk #video #card #memory #strip