0008 This is an "ultra high resolution" PC video card from 1987

[@winstonsmith478]

That box may be empty, but it's actually filled with Austrian air, a collectors item.

[@SidneyCritic]

Is that a Petrincic Bros RC gag, because Capt Blaz is always sniffing the air from boxes from the US - lol -.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

It was exceedingly fresh!

[@DavePoo2]

Mountain Air

[@Wok_Agenda]

Remember when I've opened my new old stock audician 32 ... Oh the vintage air...

[@NozomuYume]

I get all my air imported from Druidia.

[@wangzig9800]

EIZO still works in the market, in fact they develop high end monitors now! an excellent tech.

[@twocvbloke]

I remember being amazed to have 1280x1024 on a "modern" monitor back in 2002, so this card having it so much earlier, that would have been mind-blowing at the time... :D

[@Tc4ify]

Indeed - I was on a 1024x768 display until 2007(!!) and this thing came out 20 years prior!

[@liggerstuxin1]

I remember bing amazed when saw video playing on a PC monitor in a radio shack way back when.

[@freeculture]

I have an LCD "ThinkVision" right here as rotated second monitor, and it is 1280x1024 (but its rotated vertically so, 1024x1280). But, if we are talking 1990, well High res was 640x480 "Super" was 800x600, there was another word for 1024x768 and then something like this, no wonder it was called "Ultra". Its like an 8k today. Unfortunately 1m of vram was too little to display too many colors at those high resolutions, but of course you could always pick from the true color palette. The main target for this device was probably the CAD crowd, occasionally these would bring a Flight Simulator driver but for the most part no game would ever take advantage of it. If you walk a little bit into the future, around the VESA LOCAL BUS era, you will get "svga" with almost identical capabilities and limitations, albeit compatibility improved when "VESA" modes were also introduced (ie. Simcity 2000). From my fuzzy memory, i only remember seeing one person using a vga like monitor with those bnc connectors.

[@nicholash8021]

Eizao Nanao made some great monitors back in 90's. I had one of their 17 inch 1280x1024 models in 93 or 94. Opening the monthly Computer Shopper was like porn LOL. But yeah I remember starting with 320x200, then 640x350 I think, then 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. When 1280x1024 came around, it was like who would ever need more?! I'm was at 4K about or 5 years ago, and now dropping back to 2K wide for development. Fun stuff.

[@informitas0117]

Very impressive resolution for the time for sure.

[@ultrametric9317]

Amazing to say, EIZO, a Japanese company, is still in business, and has been since 1968! What a great find!

[@eformance]

BGI Driver is the Borland Graphics Interface. That means you could write/compile software that used the BGI and it would run on this card.

[@SergiuszRoszczyk]

Just wanted to say that it is probably for Pascal or Turbo C, but you watched it faster 😀

[@eDoc2020]

More importantly existing BGI programs can usually load external BGI drivers.

[@dglcomputers1498]

Talking about empty boxes used as packaging, when I brought my Thomann electronic drum kit they used empty boxes as part of the packaging and the boxes were actually printed with the words "Empty Box X"!

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

It's like "this page intentionally left blank" so you don't go thinking there was a printing error.

[@EIZOGlobal]

Now this is a blast from the past! Thanks for taking us on a stroll down memory lane.

[@arjovenzia]

Glad to see you mob are still kicking. I have to wonder, do you have a backroom with teetering boxes of goodies? for me, I work with an electronics engineering company, and recently moved premises. the AMAZING things we dug out of that dusty corner. totally worthless now, but clearly golden. my shed is a little more full now... If you do find anything cool, send them forward to be appreciated. The internet will thank you. FWIW, EIZO is now a company I will consider as "hey, these guys are cool"

[@BollingHolt]

@6:03 HAAAA! Since 1992, I've always wondered what would connect to that "feature" connector on old Trident cards! At the ripe age of 40, 29 years later, I FINALLY see one!

[@interactii]

Neat card. It would have been cool to see it running windows in high res..

[@KrzysztofC-1]

Yes, I was hoping to see that

[@CaelThunderwing]

same would of love dto see how it ran Windows at that 1280x1024

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

That'll be coming -- along with trying to get the card from 0007 working

[@mloesb]

I played with Windows 2 back in the day and I think it only supported resolutions up to VGA (640x480). Which was impressive. But it’s not what we call high res these days :-)

[@mloesb]

I was thrown by the 1987 in the title. Having watched the video I see he had drivers for windows 3 and chips made in the 90’s, so the card is a bit younger. Windows 3 could indeed run at SVGA resolutions.

[@Dargaard]

I remember setting one of these up for a dentist back in the day. He was an early adopter of digital imaging and needed the high res card for x-rays (scanned films no digital x-rays yet)

[@mattcintosh2]

I saw EIZO and first thought was "Medical Display". I have found a few early 2000's BARCO branded video cards for pretty much the same purpose.

[@ThePCPitChannel]

I had no idea EIZO made such things. I was a big fan of their CRTs in the 90s

[@skonkfactory]

Sun workstations used to use V-SIMMs too. I wonder if they work in this?

[@StarkRG]

I hope you're able to source some of those unusually-sized simms. It'd be really cool to see it in its full-colour glory.

[@Psychlist1972]

It's awesome that you upload the disk images.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

I haven't done it yet -- but I will do it and stick the mon Archive.org. There will be a follow-up video.

[@junacebedo888]

The video card needs additional ram. My 1st PC was a pre used 486 SX. PC Techs here in the Philippines says that SX is just a 386 not a 486

[@patatino666]

The Eizo video board is more complex than the main PC board itself...

[@Bongo2k]

The company is actually still around, the produce high end color correct monitors for photo/video editing

[@douggrove4686]

ah, more TIGA cards. The memories..... I'll look for the official TI documentation and disks. It was a 2 or 3 manual set with some wonderful floppies. For example, the disks had a bunch of fonts that could be loaded onto the card. Most TIGA drivers are generic, as the boards were just reference hardware from TI. I'd bet that the drivers for this card will work with your other card.

[@Walczyk]

i'd love to see some documentation on those 59 pin vram modules so i could recreate them

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Yeah neat if you can find more TIGA drivers. I want to try to get the other card (without disks) working -- future video project

[@thisnthat3530]

I have a similar EIZO card that I used extensively back in the mid '90s, except mine's 1600x1200 B&W or lower res with 4 shades of grey. It came with a 21" monochrome monitor (some model of EIZO Flexscan CRT). Windows 3.11 looked a little ridiculous with so much desktop realestate.The ribbon cable is to connect to the feature connector of the existing VGA card to pass through "standard" modes and the leadless D15 has resistors in it to fool the existing VGA into detecting a monitor. It was not uncommon for VGA BIOSes of the era to hang the computer if no monitor was present. Not sure if things are exactly the same for this card, as mine is an "addon only" card that requires a VGA card to boot the machine.

[@chrismckay3868]

Oh the pain when he opened the box from the end and not the giant treasure chest flap on the front lol love the content Adrian

[@james2hackett870]

Some of those cards also had a driver that converted hp plotter output to the screen for runner of opengl as a driver for Autocad, and wysiwyg word processors

[@awilliams1701]

It's awesome this one has the manual. I hope to see this in a future video with more comprehensive demonstrations, but that resolution in 1987 is amazing! I had trouble view that resolution on a monitor built in the mid 90s. lol

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

It's in the cards :-)

[@BlackEpyon]

Those are 60-pin SIMM slots, not 59-pin (I counted). Often you'd either label the odd end pins, or even end pins, depending on which side of the connector you've got the labels on, but I've never seen a SIMM slot with an odd number of pins.

[@TroyBest]

I agree 60pin. I believe i may still have a few

[@BlackEpyon]

@@TroyBest Slots or SIMMs? And what were they used for?

[@TroyBest]

@@BlackEpyon 60 pin SIMM memory sticks. Someplace around here i think instill have some sticks might be DIMM. Been a long time from my amiga days.

[@BlackEpyon]

@@TroyBest I ddin't know Amiga had 60-pin sticks. I'm familiar with the 30-pin SIMMs from the 386 days, and the 72-pin sticks from the Pentium I days.

[@TroyBest]

@@BlackEpyon been 30+ years, iv got so much crap packed away. Ill check tomorrow if i find ill link a pic. I kept alot of that crap the 30 and 60 pin sticks made great keychains lol

[@euromicelli5970]

11:05 I don’t think that manual was for OS/2 drivers. OS/2 1.1 was the first version to include Presentation Manager and it wasn’t available until late 1988. Also, the GUI for OS/2 was called “Presentation Manager” not “Presentation”, so titling the manual “Presentation Driver” would have been really awkward language and EIZO is not a fly-by-night operation to make a mistake like that. On the other hand, the card might have been manufactured or packaged after 1987 regardless of the component’s copyright dates. Therefore if the manual is really for OS/2 it would mean that the card has to be newer than Adrian initially assumed.

[@stonent]

Will there ever be a followup to the AT&T Unix PC? That was really interesting looking, and if you're able to get the drive formatted maybe you can get the OS loaded.

[@marksmith9566]

Are you going to retrobright the paket box ;-)

[@St3althWarrior03]

It was definitely in the hands of a cigarette smoker

[@SenileOtaku]

Was exactly what I was going to say

[@Deinonuchus]

re: Word Perfect - You needed the drivers for the equation editor, which used graphics mode.

[@fred_derf]

I've got two Ultra-High Resolution displays I bought back around 2000 attached to my system, along with a 4K monitor. The advance of technology is always astounding.

[@manueldi_77]

Cheers from Austria. Your channels are awesome. 👍

[@andrasszabo7386]

EIZO is an interesting company. Back in the early LCD era, I have found an Eizo 24 inch CRT monitor that was capable of running at 1920x1200 resolution.

[@MikeStavola]

I have an early EIZO professional grade LCD. It cost something like $1500 when it came out.

[@scality4309]

EIZO was the highest standard that one could get back in the day.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Neat -- yeah I bet this card was staggeringly expensive when it was new, especially when loaded with the RAM and the high res CRT

[@Waccoon]

Yep... I snapped up an EIZO 4:3 IPS display at a thrift outlet for a mere $7 and thought I had the score of the decade. I wanted to use it as a new display for my A1200, which now has Indivision MK3 flicker fixer. Well, I tried it and found the pixel speed was so slow, scrolling just makes a blurry mess everywhere. These old professional monitors still look fantastic when displaying still images, but really show their age when something moves across the screen. Oh well.

[@scality4309]

@@Waccoon One year ago i found a 27 inch EIZO QHD monitor for €20,- at the thriftstore. Works perfect. Only downside is that it uses 100Watt.

[@jammi__]

The VGA to BNC cable wasn't particularly expensive, only slightly more so than a regular VGA cable. I used them all the time with the 19" and 21" high-resolution RGB monitors I had. I've always been a hi-res junkie.

[@AmstradExin]

Wow! That is cool! I have a few cards like this, never got them to work!

[@KrotowX]

Remember myself at 1992 seeing 1152x882 in 24-bit color mode on obscenely expensive Mac workstation with 21" color monitor and Radius graphics card. It was something unbelievable then.

[@thechurchofsupersampling]

Oh I miss my old 1600 1200 monitor, basically HD but a long time ago considering

[@LMacNeill]

In 1987, 1280x1024 was unheard of. 640x480 was the highest resolution I had ever seen up to that time. And that was on a PS/2 with IBM's newest VGA card -- a very pricey system in its own right. This card alone would've probably cost double what that entire PS/2 system did (including its monitor) -- and then you'd have to get the 1280x1024 monitor on top of that, adding many more thousands of dollars to the cost. Some *seriously* professional CAD equipment for that time. Very, *very* expensive, and *extremely* rare -- excellent donation!! Congrats!

[@Bubu567]

Would populating the V-SIMM slots help with the speed? I assume it would allow the frame buffer to be offloaded so less moving memory around, so faster speed.

[@BertGrink]

That would seem like a very reasonable assumption.

[@big0bad0brad]

My guess is it wouldn't help; the slowdown is likely that 6 MIPS cpu on the card scanning through the emulated video ram, and either generating a new framebuffer for the whole screen, or scanning for changes and updating the changed areas in the real framebuffer. More RAM probably won't help as it's likely not RAM or RAM bandwidth starved.

[@Bubu567]

@@big0bad0brad Honestly it would depend on the implementation. Will probably need to actually put it to the test to know for sure.

[@BlackEpyon]

Typically not. The extra RAM allows you to do increased resolution and/or colour depth. H-resoultion x V-resolution x colour depth = RAM requirement)

[@tw11tube]

Some remarks to the CGA legacy, explaining the slow scrolling and the "display switch not proper" message: The classic IBM PC/XT BIOS includes a MDA BIOS and a CGA BIOS (actually, the cards are similar enough that they share one BIOS implementation with different parameters). The PC/XT mainboard included a pair of DIP switches putting the mainboard BIOS into one of four modes: 1) Configure the internal video BIOS for MDA operation 2) Configure the internal video BIOS for CGA operation at 40 column mode 3) Configure the internal video BIOS for CGA operation at 80 column mode 4) Do not try to initialize CGA or MDA, but call a BIOS extension at C000:0, if present. This setting is often called "EGA/PGA/VGA" or something like that. With the AT, the display switch was moved to the CMOS setup, usually just a single jumper remained that chooses whether a monochrome or a color video adapter is supposed to be the primary adapter. Either the message on your PC actually means "CMOS display type mismatch", or your board does in fact stilll have the full display mode switch on board. The point of the error message is that the mainboard is set up to run in mode 4 (external video BIOS), but it didn't detect an external video BIOS. Furthermore, it detected a CGA-compatible card, so it auto-switched to mode 3 (CGA BIOS support in 80 column mode). The slow scrolling is a feature of the on-board CGA BIOS. In 80-column text modes, the CGA memory bus is utilized 100% by the character scanout process. As the CGA card doesn't dare to block the ISA bus until horizontal or vertical refresh is active (which would also block any kind of DMA operation *and* *memory* *refresh*), any video memory read/write cycles during the active display period steals cycles from the graphics chip. The result is that the graphics chip uses the data read/written by the processor instead of the data it actually needs, so it displays wrong characters or colors (I don't remember whether only character, only attribute or both kind of cycles could be stolen, but I suspect it's only one kind). To prevent the display of "snow", the integrated CGA BIOS scrolls the screen only during the blanking period.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Think of that resolution in 1990! That raw power!!!!

[@matthewvesperman6882]

I'm fairly certain that the BGI driver is for the Borland Graphics Interface that was part of Turbo Pascal/Turbo C

[@AlexanderHuck]

That was also my first thought when reading BGI.

[@petersimmonds9827]

Other side of this card: They were typically sold with a (BIG) fixed frequency monitor. Generally as students we had to lug these beasts home, and to get the monitors working it was a matter of switching plugs between a normal monitor and the "beast" while having "Scitech Display Doctor" installed to repropgam the sync frequencies to suit the "Beast" monitor! Only way us poor students could afford a high res monitor in the day to do our CAD work! All on windows 98! Often we would have to wire up some logic converters to invert the sync signals to make them compatible with VGA. The VGA to BNC cable you showed suggest this is what the card was designed for...

[@levimluke]

I applaud you for your commitment to digital archiving. Could you please either make a link to your online contributions that we may more easily find them? Thank you!

[@greggv8]

There was an advanced universal VESA video driver for DOS and Windows 3.1x which used to cost a fair bit for a long time then the company made it unsupported freeware. It supported a boatload of video cards and chips, including getting the high resolutions and color depths working in Windows 3.1x when there was no manufacturer support. But I can't bloody remember the name of the software package! I probably have it stored away somewhere on an ancient CD-R or spanned ZIP on several floppy drives.

[@Dave5281968]

I acquired an AT286 PC a few months ago that had one of those TIGA cards in it. (A Cornerstone Technologies card with 256K VRAM and a 9 pin D-Sub video connector with 1024x768@67Hz output.) Problem is that even the NEC Multisync XL that I have can't seem to display the image from it. I know the card is working properly, but the 67KHz horizontal synch and 67Hz vertical synch signals from it are too high (and very non-standard) for any monitor I have. I'm guessing the 286 was used for either CAD or desktop publishing. And like you say, I can find no information at all on the card, probably because Cornerstone Technologies went out of business in the early 90's, an the company name was subsequently used again in 2001 for a totally unrelated business and they provide nothing of use for finding any information on the original business. It's really a shame since these TIGA cards were among the first to have actual graphics acceleration. I can't wait to see a video demoing how these worked in the older PC's.

[@monchiabbad]

Hmm mini mail-call as in just one product. For me a mini mail call can be as long as is necessary to bring over most knowledge of product presented. Thank you very much for all the wonderfully brought content. Keep up the good work.

[@sa3270]

I remember getting a computer at work in 1996 that went up to 1152 x 864 and I was very happy.

[@beatadalhagen]

Got a 5:4 display, and are those drivers expecting square pixels?

[@erinwiebe7026]

Thumbs up for the kitty condo!

[@MattyEngland]

Meow, meow, meow

[@tonylewis4661]

I believe the TMS340 processors were designed by an engineer that was also responsible for the TMS9995, the successor to the 9900 in the TI99/4a (the 9995 was to be used in the TI99/8 an aborted successor to the /4a). The concept of combining the video processor on the same silicon as a general processor was ahead of it's time. TI could not get Microsoft to get behind the TMS340 as a Windows card, and the proprietary vram (seems like TI never learned that lesson) was too expensive.

[@Dufhuebktdb]

I love old hardware like this so much!

[@ultrametric9317]

If this is really from 1987 then that is damn good. Back in those days I was heavy into assembly level work on graphics standards. The IBM 8514/a bus master Microchannel XGA card with matching 1024x768 monitor was the standard for high-res graphics and it cost something like $5000 in 1987 money. My work environment in the mid-80s included a dedicated 1024x768 display that cost twice as much - 2 years earlier. The 8514/a board alone was nearly $1500. At the time, we thought we'd never see affordable hi-res graphics. The rise of ATI and rapid propagation of standards was astonishing to us.

[@InsaneWayne355]

Gotta say, I'm really liking this "Byte-Size" Mail Call format.

[@SimonEllwood]

BITD I used a clone 486 PC with a Hercules Graphics Station card and a 20" NEC 4D or maybe 5D Multisync monitor and a dedicated puck driven tablet as an AutoCAD "Workstation". I also had a separate mono monitor on the PC for the commands. I think it was based round a TI chip and had an onboard VGA chipset.

[@IDPhotoMan]

Same with me. I still have my tablet on my wall.

[@SimonEllwood]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_Graphics_Architecture

[@holzwurm_hd7029]

Damn! That thing is BEAUTIFUL God damn it... Wow... im jealous.

[@mattcintosh2]

EIZO makes a lot of medical displays, so it was probably paired with one at one time.

[@misterkite]

I remember the video expansion cable. In 1997 I couldn't afford a dvd player, but I could get a dvd rom drive and a hollywood+ mpeg2 card for maybe $200 or so. It was truly an overlay. If you took a screenshot, you just got a pink square where the movie was.

[@williamsquires3070]

At least your box of air (and the air inside) were undamaged in shipping. 🤣

[@phantom2012]

Back in the day... My family bought me a 386. I got a Targa card with it. 1024x768 with upgrades for Truevision aka 16.7m colors. I had the best graphics card at the time, but it was absolutely dog slow. And it came with a literal binder of discs to interface with all the software I never used. It did have a 13w3 adapter. Only much later did I know what that was for. My second PC was a 486/Delta pc. Never did find the tpc unit that matched it, aka the Delta transputer card.

[@Hiraghm]

oh man it uses the TMS34010!! I SO wanted one of those for my Amiga!

[@AureliusR]

Aw man, this video was way too short. I wanted to see it running in parallel with a VGA card. You even have all the drivers to fully test it. Did you ever get around to making a full video on this? If not, I'd gladly take it off your hands to make a full video so people can see it in action!

[@xmaniac99]

HP UX monitors also used to have the vga to bnc connector option. I recognize that cable!

[@NotFalco]

you can get more ULTRA on Adrian’s patreon

[@raymondkoopmans178]

I think the Video Memory from older Apple Macintoshes might work, Performa and Quadra series to be precise.

[@jimmyf2618]

what really caught my attention was while playing Virtual pool in dos. There was this option for Diamond Viper P9000 accel. It was the only video card to support the 1024x768 in DOS for Virtual Pool 1. I always dreamed what it would look and play like.

[@johnsonlam]

Not sure if the "Scitech display doctor" VESA driver will be able to dig a bit more ability under DOS, worth to try.

[@bobbofly]

LOL! 0:04 - The opening lap is facing you, with rounded corners & a thumb-hole in the center. XD The irony... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@horusfalcon]

Woot! Same chip as the other one (TMS34010), so drivers may work for both? I'm a bit confused: 59-pin SIMM? Oh... it's a SIMM, so it has two redundant rows of 59 pins?

[@AceStrife]

Wow, Eizo is older than I thought. First product I owned from them was the Foris FG2421, one of the first 120Hz monitors. .. and I haven't heard anything about them since.

[@ricardocancino6850]

Hi! EIZO dates from 1968. It started as an OEM company making B/W TV sets for SONY. The Foris line was discontinued some years ago. EIZO as a brand is alive and kicking, though.

[@billkillernic]

"I don't know how to open this thing" OMG 0:18 the damn thing has an obvious flap in its front you open it through there lol I never saw such a box either and it wasnt even physically in front of me yet I still can tell how to open it lol.

[@snow8725]

Almost 1080p in 1990!!! Expandable RAM and other expansion slots on a GPU! That thing is like a whole damn motherboard for graphics! That is just impressive! The golden age of computing is dead.

[@photolabguy]

Rammy couldn't even fill this beast of a video card.

[@bandbgamesroom]

Lol, watching this on an Eizo CG241W monitor

[@infopackrat]

I wonder if you could make the special simm modules the way you can make 30 pin simm modules today?

[@douro20]

The "ei" in EIZO is pronounced like a long "A".

[@horusfalcon]

Yup. Japanese Romaji characters have different pronunciation rules than German.

[@Nukle0n]

The company is still around and make monitors to this day. Also Eizo means "image".

[@theldraspneumonoultramicro405]

0:13, how you missed this massive flap on the side of the box is anyones guess, it's my first time seeing a box like this and that thing is one of the first things i notices as its just to big and obvious not to.

[@kennethhawkins5943]

I just subscribed to your channel. The kitty condo nailed it.

[@jeeptrail08]

That card was actually designed for medical equipment. I still have an LCD monitor made by eizo to work with that card.

[@BrainSlugs83]

I'm wondering if any of the other modes are any faster, or even if the VGA pass through is any faster either. Would love to see a follow up video showing the different modes, and hardware configurations. And is the RAM really 59 pin, and not 30-pin? (like does it start counting at 29?) I'm sure you're right, but would love to see 30 pin memory side by side with the sockets to shut up my brain goblins. ✌🏻

[@absalomdraconis]

Faster for CAD and other wireframe stuff when using the proper driver, usually identical to or slower than normal graphics cards otherwise. These would be a waste of money for virtually any DOS game for example, though perhaps something like Tempest or another wireframe game could be ported to work well on the machine.

[@mohamedmusthaq7629]

VSIMM - Video Single Inline Memory Module

[@brykanst9071]

that was one impressive card for its day

[@brykanst9071]

i wonder if there would be a way to make ram modules for that

[@jandjrandr]

I heard rumours in high school in 1991 about a card like this which at that time had unattainable resolutions for most computers. Now I know the rumours were true.

[@TronixGuy93]

I actually got one of those for free in 1989. I had the fully upgraded memory to boot.

[@holzwurm_hd7029]

Such a lovely card.

[@zesped1259]

- Ultra high resolution? - Is a pc graphics card? - It's in stock? Forget the 3090...

[@thedopplereffect00]

I really want to see this run Windows 3.1 and AutoCAD. Only having access to 640x480 back then, 1280*1024 just have been amazing. Maybe you can run 1024x768 with 256 colors?

[@benrogersdevon]

I remember using AutoCad at college on Windows 98SE I think and the hardware was usually Celeron in the region of 700MHz with 64MB RAM and accessing simple office type programs such as Access and Excel took a lot of time due to the program needing a decent setup (back then)

[@zarkeh3013]

neato card! ... with pcb places and software available.... maybe reverse engy-near VSIM modules?

[@greywolf6443]

I wonder, if anyone has ever used one of those registry cards you used to get with software and some hardware back in the day...

[@randywatson8347]

Damn that's ultra high spec for 1987!

[@MrDarchangelomni]

I used to have the 21" version of the monitor for that high res board, It was @ 150 lbs and if you had an mda and an ega/vga you could use triple display in 1991.

[@Fogolol]

did you end up making a full on video about this thing? if you did can you link it to me please?

[@charlesjmouse]

I see your cat(s) has/have you well trained: On opening a box of exciting retro goodies the first thing you say is "That would make a great kitty condo."

[@SpartanGR]

If you could scan the manual and upload it to the internet, it would go a long way along with the drivers

[@prozacgodretro]

Well that's the first time I've ever seen anything plug into a VGA feature connector... It's funny I saw the cable and thought that's exactly what it was for, even having never seen it in use.

[@Tranarpnorra]

Oooo, this gives me "shiver-me-timbers" feeling. I bought a "super PC" back in the day when I visited the CeBit messe back in 1991 and saw and used a Silicon graphics Iris Indigo ELAN machine. So I bought the most up to spec 486DX50 that I could find, put in a RAID (4MB of cache) controller and bought a Volante AT2000 graphics card ($1500) for that nice graphics in windows 3.1/3.11 + a Tseng Lab's ET4000 card for DOS. To show that awesome graphics I also bought a 17" Viewsonic monitor with built in LCD screen (can't remember the product ID). And also the best sound card I could find to make it truly multimedia. It was a killer PC but one year later I sold it due to economic problems. Go figure. =) Aaaand, it still didn't beat the Iris Indigo ELAN. =(

[@arjovenzia]

Wow, they had RAID that far back? I had no idea... Thats pretty rad. I did have a Tseng Labs ET4000 card, was a VLB. I kept using it for years, I thought it 'looked' nicer. for a few years there was an epic second hand computer shop in my nearest city that was a Must Visit every time we went. I rarely left with any money. The store was a mess, shelves of plastic tubs of parts, racks of old gear. the guy was great, defiantly knew his stuff, n cos I was a regular, knew my PC better than I did. what ram would work best, good upgrades, all that kinda stuff. It was a full 25 years since I met him that I bought an off the shelf PC. these things are Built, not Bought. Even my work PC's got heavily modified. This was pre-internet, so I could call him up n ask, "aye Tony, shes doin this, whatta I do?". He also had a literal filing cabinet full of driver disks, and would provide a copy with every sale. if it needed a driver, he wouldn't sell it if he didnt have the driver. the ET4000 was one of his 'Backroom" items I got out of him.

[@Tranarpnorra]

@@arjovenzia Thanks for the story. Yeah, RAID has been around for a while, SCSI only though back then. This was pre VLB so the RAID controller fit into an EISA slot to get over that pesky ISA bottleneck. =)

[@Nanarchy_2k7]

oh, man. used to have one of those in a dx33. nostalgia central :D

[@mysterymayhem7020]

that is some insane resolution from 1987

[@liggerstuxin1]

I remember bing amazed when saw video playing on a PC monitor in a radio shack way back when.

[@B24Fox]

Hi Adrian. Where did you upload the software diskettes?? P.S. thank you for the really awesome content! :D

[@Renville80]

First time in ages I’ve seen 5 1/4” disks with write protect stickers.