Let's revive some very old graphics cards

[@protonjinx]

My name is Retro-Jesus and I approve of this restoration.

[@burtpanzer]

Retro-Jesus goes by protonjinx on KZbin?

[@LetsPlayKeldeo]

I love the "Lets repair old add in cards" videos ! Keep them up please ! They so much fun to watch

[@dalecomer5951]

Very encouraging to know that parts are obtainable for those old cards even if by slow boat and a video BIOS for one could be available to download.

[@joshpayne4015]

I stumbled across your channel recently and really love your content. Subscribed!

[@TC_here]

Love seeing all these retro cards. Great videos.

[@gilgamesh9735]

This channel high key underrated

[@stoojinator]

These videos are awesome! Thank you for resuscitating these old cards. They have so much more love to give. It saddens me to think how many have ended up in landfill or scrapped for the miniscule amount of gold that is in each card.

[@jeffm2787]

I found the faster RAMDAC's gave a slightly sharper image back in the day. ET4000 was my very first VGA card on a 286. Good video as always 👍

[@pwissink1]

Ahh, the channel with the awesome intro has a new video(card)! Good video, 3 cards saved from landfills.

[@DxDeksor]

Great work ! I like fixing hardware likes it that deserves some love, especially when there's not much to do to revive it !

[@CPUGalaxy]

great video as always! thanks 🙏🏻

[@Stratotank3r]

best content like always! Such an OAK Card was installed in my 486DLC-40. The card was good but very slow what i learned later. So it had to be replaced. Next was a Spea V7 Vega Video to drive my 486DX4-100 rig where the OAK was still in.

[@ctiborkoza8944]

Awesome video thanks

[@briangoldberg4439]

thanks for the videos. i think your work is always entertaining. especially i appreciate your good editing and explanations.

[@dionisiosklonaris493]

Nice restoration work! BTW, concerning vertical "banding" when using a VGA card with a TFT monitor: if possible (when not integrated into the chipset), replace the RAMDAC chip. In my experience, the best one is IMSG176P-80S.

[@necro_ware]

Yes, I noticed, that independent if it's G176 or others, with 80MHz RAMDACs it usually looks better on TFTs, but unfortunately not always. I never really understood the system when it works and when not. And as you saw in this video, the ET4000 had barely banding, but the OTI077 had it, despite, that they used the same RAMDAC. Off camera I swapped them to see if there is any change, but it didn't change. The ET4000 was almost clean and the OTI077 not. EDIT: also 80MHz RAMDACs were much harder to find.

[@dionisiosklonaris493]

Indeed, some cards retain the vertical banding problem, even after changing the RAMDAC...

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Great repair 👍

[@cpopte]

Subscribed. This channel will be big. I am subscribed to alot of retro channels, but I am mostly interested in PC retro, not comodore and amiga....and such. I really like this channel. Keep up the good work .

[@chateuaxfaygeaux]

Love the channel. It's strange to think of this stuff as being sought-after now when not long ago I could find cards like this by the bucketful at ham shows and whatnot. I used to have an ET4000-based card (Viewsonic I think) and it was perhaps the most reliable card I had as far as compatibility went. It was the only card I had at the time which didn't have weird palette issues when using the VESA feature connector with my RealMagic MPEG decoder. Sad to see your card doesn't have the connector populated or even available.

[@rs-qq3os]

As usually interesting content, great job!

[@Jasonsadventures]

Cool video, I actually have a ET4000 and a Oak card with missing chips

[@MJPilote]

Oh man those where the days, I still have one old 3Dfx Voodoo 2 in the storage somewhere. S3 trio and Voodoo2 was a fast package for playing.

[@frankschwittay2719]

Great work again and very interesting. I have the NEC 1970NXp. ;)

[@BlackGymkhana]

You deserve more subscribers...

[@Vermilicious]

Kudos for fixing them. I find it a bit amusing and annoying that those who harvested these chips only bothered with the socketed chips. And I doubt even that made anyone much money.

[@necro_ware]

I doubt that as well, but unfortunately a lot of people don't know what they are doing.

[@ochykysh]

They sell the chips for about 8-9 EUR pro kilogram. It does not make sense for individuals, but recyclers can live off that volume.

[@necro_ware]

@@ochykysh They could live a lot better, if they'd know, what they have in their hands :D

[@pavelfara9333]

Ohh, here where I live those scrap collectors are like crazy. If you wanna get some stuff you have to very often deal with really wierd people. The worst case are CPUs (286 up to socket 7 and Slot 1) They are paying here up to 400E per Kg in case of 486 ceramics. (depends on what CPUs you have) and it is almost impossible to get it from a scrap yard - does not matter you pay more than the value is. 😓

[@altbeetle1998]

great job!

[@Edman_79]

Very cool. You're good!

[@yogevbocher3603]

Ah, finally somebody who pronounces Wolfenstein correctly ;-)

[@AFFL1CTED1]

Vulvfenshtiehn

[@wittonleung8732]

Luckly I keep one ET1000 & several ET4000s too. The ISA means retro, always.

[@joesaiditstrue]

That MCE adapter is pretty nice. Suggestion: I would connect it between two cables, that way it isn't putting strain on the video card port

[@JamesPotts]

By pure luck, my first PC (386DX 25, purchased in Jan 1991) came with an ET-4000. Allowed my 386 to punch a little above its weight class.

[@JamesPotts]

I say "by luck" because I didn't have any idea about dos gaming performance. I just knew I wanted a card that could do 1024x768 with at least 256 colors.

[@necro_ware]

That resolution was really high for 1991. You must have had a super expensive monitor. Most of the 14" Monitors back then couldn't show anything above 800x600. I got a 15" monitor 1995 and that one could finally handle 1024x768 at 70Hz. It even could get up to 1280x1024, but the image was unstable and otherwise unusable at only 60Hz. My eyes were bleeding after 10 minutes starring at that thing :D And it was everything else but cheap as well.

[@JamesPotts]

@@necro_ware it was interlaced for 1024x768. And even so, it was pushing it. 2-3 years later, when I got a job on campus, it was the first thing I upgraded. Got an ADI MicroScan 4G. Correction: first upgrade was from 1MB to 5MB ram. Second was a 200MB drive. Third was the monitor. But that was the only piece that I outright replaced. This was when companies like Maxtor and ADI seriously undercut prices with quality products. I remember that drive was about half the price compared to others. Was an exciting time in tech.

[@dalecomer5951]

@@necro_ware So true. I can attest to that but my expensive NEC CRT monitor lasted for 15 years of daily use.

[@tassdesu]

Cool video. What dioxide do you use?

[@necro_ware]

Either WD40 contact spray, or German Teslanol Kontakt Spray

[@denyda1754]

Поздравляю с тремя победами :)

[@necro_ware]

Спасибо, стараемся :)

[@yakacm]

Love the way you say Wolfenstein, same as Phil from Phil's Computer Lab who is österreichisch.

[@necro_ware]

Well, obviously Castle Wolfenstein was located somewhere in the 3rd Reich and this is how it really sounds in German :D

[@Metalliferous]

Great video as always! Did you ever have to replace any of the capacitors (tantalum/electrolytic) on any of your video cards? Btw: Like counter was at 386 likes, felt reluctant to press it ;)

[@necro_ware]

Thank you. I usually don't repair what's not broken, so I don't change any caps without a reason. Only if they are visibly bad, or I have a stron susspicion about them.

[@senilyDeluxe]

I have stacks of old (S)VGA cards and it's common for the OKI ones to have these bands and they do show up on CRTs. The only other card that has bands is a Deico with Cirrus Logic chipset from 1988 (my oldest VGA card). The Trident 9000 (512k), OKI077 (usually at 512k) and Tseng 4000 (usually at 1M) are the most common cards I have - I got more than 5 each. The Tsengs are also the most inconsistent when it comes to speed. In the Landmark speed test, the Tridents and Okis usually get around 2200cps, the Tsengs go from 2600 to a bit over 6000 with the most common value being around 4000. Although I once had an IBM 50 MHz 486 that had a Tseng 4000 on board with 1M of video RAM and that got just over 1000cps on Landmark. Waiting for a 1024x768 256 color wallpaper to load took about ten seconds. The 6000cps one takes... idk less than 10 frames.

[@bad.sector]

Nice new one! Funnily enough I just played around w/ HW acceleration of the ET chips yesterday. I actually have a similar OAK card lying around, I could've probably copied the BIOS as well if the page haven't had it. But you don't really want them in your system. They're usually slow as hell and line up with Trident in the Mr. Slow awards!

[@necro_ware]

Thank you! The OAK card has a very good compatibility and is a good choice for a 286 and 386sx, which will not unleash the full potential of an ET4000.

[@bad.sector]

@@necro_ware You're right... given the only slow machine below a 486 I have is an 8088 I never considered that :D

[@nickwallette6201]

The Tridents aren’t all bad either. IIRC the 9000 (maybe it was 8900) actually performs quite well compared to the average Cirrus or whatever.

[@necro_ware]

@@nickwallette6201 It depends, Tridents have a very good compatibility with VGA and a very precise EGA/CGA emulation. However, most of them are very slow, except one - 8900D (and it's predecessor 8900CL). All the other Trident cards I wouldn't use in a fast machine. Remark: I'm talking only about ISA.

[@necro_ware]

Oh and unfortunately, all the 8900, 9000C and 9000B have a bad banding on TFT monitors as I've shown in the video. Only 9000i have a good image quality on TFTs, but they are super slow :)

[@sarbenminari2013]

С удивлением узнал, что ты говоришь по русски, здорово)) Было бы супер, если бы в каком нибудь видео хоть мельком затронул проблему полос на старых видяшках и ЛСД мониторах

[@necro_ware]

Хорошо, запишу себе в список. Я собираю желания и то тут, то там затрагиваю разные вопросы. Я мельком в этом видео затронул тему полос, но, правда, только мельком ;)

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

I'd like to see you label over foil stickers on EPROMs you flashed. Maybe one day, that little bit (or byte) of information could be useful to someone else.

[@maxmuster7003]

Very old, no ,no, no. I am older. f....

[@joaoc_PT]

Next, revive audio cards? :D Tks for the video!

[@myw4y]

I quote "Great Succes" :)))

[@djpirtu2]

Just bought myself an ET4000 (TSVGA) and it looks just like the upper one (with MORSE sticker) at beginning of this video. It has jumpers and I dont have anu clue what they, google wont help either. And if I run a demo called Nooon - Stars it gives a flickering blue background on starting credits... Is a problem in card or just incompatibility.

[@darthtripedacus1]

I love amber phosphorus. Does your adaptor emulate that?

[@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821]

I dunno about that VGA museum site, they didn't even list my Voodoo 3 (Voodoo 3 2000 PCI). 😉 Someday (not anytime soon) I want to experiment with the cooling of it. Back when I was still using it I replaced the stock GPU cooler for something better than the thin passive HS, as it could get rather toasty. There's also something that looks kinda like a voltage regulator near the top of the card that you don't want to get your fingers near when it's been on for a while (I didn't have any way to check the temps back then, but I'm quite confident it was 70⁰C+, from the "ouch factor"). It has a crappy passive heatsink on it, but I'd like to see how much difference a much better passive or even active cooler could make to it. Not because I need to or anything, just because I think it would be interesting. 🤓

[@necro_ware]

Which one Voodoo 3 PCI do you have. On the vgamuseum there are couple of them www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/k2/item/6-3dfx-voodoo-3-2000

[@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821]

@@necro_ware What the... that's weird, when I did a search for all the Voodoo cards I didn't see those. I didn't feel like rummaging to find my actual board, but I just remembered I had taken some pics of it that were on an external drive. It's basically identical to Vlask's Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, except for the RAM. His has Etrontech chips, whereas mine are Siemens. Edit: thanks for finding that. 👍

[@necro_ware]

@@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821 Well I think VGA museum is the best place to search for the graphics cards. If they don't have it, you will have a really hard time to find it elsewhere. I think, they have like 99% of the cards. At least the retro ones, I don't know how it looks like with the newer models.

[@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821]

@@necro_ware Yeah, I've bookmarked it for future reference. 👍 Although I enjoy watching some vids like yours I'm not as into retro tech quite as much as you are, unless it's something from my past, either that I owned, used, or wanted to own at some point. In those cases it's more personal nostalgia than a general interest.

[@ms-dosman7722]

It's a good day when you do not need to whip out the soldering iron to fix your hardware :)

[@necro_ware]

I even don't consider it a repair to be honest, that's why this video is called "let's revive" and not "let's repair" ;)

[@maxmuster7003]

ET4000 isa slot, 1 mb, videomode with RGB 24 bit color in 640x480 framebuffer in A0000 with bank switching.

[@veneroso3337]

ET Phone Home....if you want to live!

[@Nebbia_affaraccimiei]

5:00 just FYI the Parentheses are not needed when doing multiply operations :)

[@user-et1vj1oz3f]

Good repair!!!! a question I have an ati x1950 pro AGP that gives wrong colors and the screen flickers on / off continuously before it did much less, by chance could you help me? Thank you

[@necro_ware]

It's hard to tell, did you test the capacitors? If they don't hold the charge such on/off things could happen.

[@user-et1vj1oz3f]

@@necro_ware ok, as soon as I have news I'll let you know

[@jonatas464]

Hi! Can you do some review of VESA cards?

[@necro_ware]

Do you mean VLB or SVGA?

[@jonatas464]

@@necro_ware Some days ago I have seem yours old videos and I see one that you had some problems with a motherboard that only detect 8 bit cards. You have found one broken trace and, after this, that card worked again in 16 bits mode. How these VLB graphic card worked in 32bit, even if the processor was 16 bits? Or it's my mistake?

[@necro_ware]

@@jonatas464 I think you mixed something. VLB was introduced with the 486, which is a 32 bit CPU. The last 16 bit x86 CPU was the 286.

[@jonatas464]

@@necro_ware yes! I mixed everything! Hahahahahahhahaha! Sorry! But would it be nice to explain How the same slots can change between 8, 16 or 32bit(like ISA with VESA).

[@nickwallette6201]

@@jonatas464 They don’t. The ISA slot exists in both 8- and 16-bit forms. The 16-bit version is longer and has the notch on the middle. It’s just an 8-bit slot with additional 16-bit signals. Likewise VLB slots are 32-bit. There is a plain 16-bit ISA slot in front of the 32-bit VLB extension. You can use it as a 16-bit or 8-bit slot and ignore the VLB extension, a fully 32-bit card that just uses the VLB slot, or you can have a card that has some ISA features and some VLB features. A common example of the latter is a VLB controller card. The serial, parallel, and floppy ports will be controlled by the ISA portion, while the hard drive controller will be controlled by the VLB portion.

[@husbyugur77]

my first pc was a co mmodore pc-1 and it was hercules also. at a certen point i found an emulator floppy that made it possible tyo play most of the games miss those days

[@douro20]

I actually have an ET4000 board in my 5150, just so I can have VGA on it. Mine has 512K on it.

[@Baoran]

I am surprised Tseng labs card were popular even during ET1000 period because my ET3000AX is the slowest vga card I own and it is even slower than the slow trident and oak cards I have so I always thought that ET4000AX was the only good card they made.

[@necro_ware]

That's a very common mistake, that many people make. The ET3000 is slower, than the others, because it was released a lot earlier, in times, where EGA was still dominating the market. Between ET3000 and ET4000 there were about 5 years of development. Comparing the cards is like to compare a flagman GPU from today with a GPU from 5 years ago.

[@rodhester2166]

et1000 lol

[@necro_ware]

I guess, you are the first one, who watched this video so far :D Nobody noticed it yet.

[@kenziegt3388]

I dont even know that there is a chip/ic with "PHILIPPINES" marked on it. 14:20

[@necro_ware]

It must be a ROM with fonts.

[@corneliusantonius3108]

Lot's of Motorola chips I see there.

[@rallyscoot]

why would you revive an old and slowest OTI graphics card?

[@necro_ware]

Why would I do anything with an old and slow hardware anyway? Because I can! ;)

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

LCD monitors are not using VGA signal directly, they convert it. So I'm not sure that you tested these cards completely.

[@necro_ware]

Yes, as I told in the end, that was just a basic test. However, if a TFT display manufacturer declared the product to be VGA compatible, it would be quite paranoid to not consider this test good enough. Otherwise, I would have to test those graphics cards with every monitor on earth to be really sure. I'm quite confident, that I can also find a CRT monitor which will have problems with one or all of that cards. You know, if something walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it is probably a duck indeed.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

​@@necro_ware comparing TFT VGA and CRT VGA is like comparing DOSBox and DOS. They are compatible, but still have differences. Of course, most likely, cards are fine. But like with developing software with emulator and then trying to run in on real hardware, there may be surprises.

[@necro_ware]

@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 Sure surprises are never to be excluded, still in this case I'm quite confident.

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

Turn off your heart light. Extended Technology, not Extra Terrestrial.

[@cesaru3619]

ALL THIS WORK JUST TO PLAY WOLFENSTEIN 3D????

[@necro_ware]

Hey! Just wanted to point you out, that you should probably clean your keyboard. Your Caps Lock stuck badly. You are welcome!

[@cesaru3619]

@@necro_ware LUL

[@K10driver]

If it took forever to ship some chips from china to you, why this video is online now? My calculation tells me that it should be online earliest in 42/0 years!

[@necro_ware]

I was never very good in infinity calculations ;)