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PCI gfx card capable of running at 3.57MHz on PCI bus


trodas

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Guys, I understand, that this is "slightly extreme", but maybe I can find someone who "was there before" and could give me some info, as to witch graphic card I should be using on Socket 7 (that means Pentium 1, no MMX) mainboard with PCI slots.

For example GF 2 MX400 refuse to even post...

 

I use S3 Trio64 (v1), yet the display is trashed a lot:

 

7_15_x_1_5_P90_superlow_clock.png

 

The reason is simple - it is running at 3.57MHz PCI bus clock. And I'm not kidding. Asus TXP4-X mainboard use ICS 9169 PLL chip. That chip can be tricked to FSB clock reference / 2. Reference clock being 14.31818MHz, witch give 7.14MHz FSB. This is not that big problem for some CPU's (AMD K5 PR75 refuse to post, BTW), however the PCI clock is, in this case, reference / 4 = 3,579545MHz.

 

I wish I was kidding, but I'm not:

ICS_9169_PCI_bus_lock_possible.jpg

http://web.archive.org/web/20000919074447/http://www.icst.com/pdf/9169c-27.pdf

 

So I would like to have a graphic card, that can work w/o the trashing of the display, as shown above, in 1024x768 resolution and at least 256 colors, so the background is "visible."

 

It does work just fine in VGA mode, but WinXP have a support for S3 Trio64 build-in and enforce me to 800x600 with 16bit and that it is. No way to change resolution or even depth of the display (only v1 Trio64 + 1MB ram installed only).

 

So, can someone suggest a graphic card, capable of showing nicer graphics at 3.57MHz PCI bus clock? :P I know that this is kinda extreme, but any help could come handy :P

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Hmm, maybe it is a long shot... did you try ISA video card? Perhaps it could work in extreme conditions such as this. Not sure about winXP compatibility though. All I can say is that Trident 8900 1MB was working fine on my 486 board using Windows NT 4.0 and 1024x768 8bit color.

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No idea, what frequency to expect on the ISA bus, when running ref / 2 clock. If the 8MHz ISA clock is taken from the 24MHz by 3x divider, then at situation, when it is not 24MHz, but ref / 4 (3,575MHz), then we have to expect condition like 1,191666MHz on the ISA bus...

 

Just plain math. It is probably better idea to force the VGA mode that works just well... even if that means - God forbid! - 640x480 in 16colors :( I would hope for 1024x768, but that is not going to happen... so 800x600 in 16colors I maybe can manage? In case of 640x480 I would just need more validation screens, lol...

 

And I did not have any ISA card to try and getting a good one like Tseng ET4000AX sounds kinda expensive with the unclear perspective on the working situation...

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  • 3 weeks later...

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