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LGR - Diamond Viper VLB Windows 3.1 Accelerator Card (Patreon)

Published:
2020-03-22 16:24:51
Edited:
2020-03-22 22:09:19
Imported:
2021-03

Content

Greetings! I hope things are going as well as possible wherever you happen to be. Times are truly getting surreal over here, so uh...

Let's look at VLB graphics cards! Specifically the 2MB Diamond Viper VLB from 1993, which cost $550 back when it first launched back then. The equivalent of a thousand bucks considering inflation, all for a whopping two megabytes to run Windows 3.1 at higher resolution, color, and speed. Worth it? Ehh, maybe if you were really into certain productivity apps.

I don't really consider this as part of the "Woodgrain PC Update" series, even though I'm using that computer throughout the video. I won't be leaving this card in there and have already replaced it with something more suitable to my desires, for reasons that'll become clear in the video I think.

Anyway yeah, not sure what the next topic is going to be at this point. This video was started several weeks ago, before Doom Eternal and before the social isolation guidelines went into effect. So several of the things I had in the works no longer make any sense to do right now, like traveling to a retro event, reviewing a digital camera that requires me going out in public more than is advised right now, and finishing the next episode of Thrifts (which has been postponed for the foreseeable future.)  I guess there's a Cities Skylines pack coming out soon, maybe I'll review that since it's the first one of those in a while! If nothing else, I've got a buncha sidelined projects here at home.

I'm also still releasing random unscripted videos about things and whatever over on LGR Blerbs. The most recent one is a video about Software Evolution's shareware packages released in Canada in the early '90s. Nothing super special, but I do plan to open a few of those up and try them out soon as well.

Stay safe, folks!

Files

Diamond Viper VLB

an LGR thing.

Comments

DFawlt Uzr

Hope you're staying safe during all this!

Anonymous

I guess you could film yourself browsing on eBay for the next Thrifts episode...

50_SHADES_OF_BEIGE

Yeah yeah! My first card was a 2MB Diamond Stealth 2000

Anonymous

I am really looking forward to some of those LGR blerbs shareware titles. I really haven't heard of most of those.

Anonymous

Thanks Clint, stuff like this keeps me from getting too down in the dumps.

Steve Skafte
>>34032144

I would love to see some game reviews of obscure shareware crap. Nothing would make me happier than to dig through some of those nostalgic memories right about now.

Anonymous

Clint, great video thanks, Here is the retro Graphics cards I have: Radeon 7000 AGP in a PIII Win98, ATi Rage Pro in a PIII Win98, NVidia GeFroce Ti 4200 64MB in my AMD XP build, ATi Rage Pro 3D AGP another PIII Win98/Win3.1, Cirrus Logic (at work) in a PIII, Trident TVGA8900 ISA (1992) in my wood grain 486, Diamond Virge Pro 4MB Stealth 3D 2000 Pro, NVidia GeForce 2MX 200 (spare) PNY GeForce FX5200 256 PCI (spare) ...I haven't done any benchmarks except testing out games..:)

Anonymous

If this was made before corona, the reference to social distancing is some serious premonition stuff.

Anonymous

When it comes to fast 2D cards - you really have to go with Tseng ET4000 w32 VLB. I can't remember who benchedmarked a whole bunch of ISA cards, perhaps it was PixelPipes, perhaps it was one of the other similarly popular channels , but you should be able to find it. I know that Phil, from PhilsComputerLab, also did some performance tests on ISA cards.

Anonymous

Stay safe, Clint! Your videos have been giving us much joy during this very uncertain time so we appreciate your hard work.

Bryan McIntosh

Holy crap, I have one of these sitting in my Parts Closet! It came with my uncle's Zeos 486 DX2-66 that was fully loaded back in 1993, with this video card along with 16 MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster 16 sound card. I got it in 1993 after he bought a new system, and I remember that it was a complete dog in low-res DOS games; mine had an issue with something on the card dying that led to occasional screen corruption and lockups when using that POS Oak chipset on the board. I replaced it with a Western Digital Paradise VLB card, then the system sat in storage for years until my parents finally junked it in 2011. I probably should have scooped out the sound card and video card, but at the time I thought that DOSBox emulation would be good enough for that era of games. It would have been quite the museum piece now, though! That system was unique in that it was a 486 that had on-board IDE connectors, which was REALLY rare in 1993. I had a hell of a time getting an IDE CD-ROM drive to work on it, which required me to add in an ISA IDE card for the CD-ROM drive and run the hard drive off the local-bus adapter built into the Zeos Gosling motherboard.

Anonymous

WOA, I remember talking about you on twitter how you could improve the framerate on Duke 3D and now this video came out? That's awesome hah

Joon Choi

Stay safe buddy - my vote is for quickie / blerb videos on all those old shareware games plus the hundreds of retro games you’ve found on thrifts and from donations.

Joon Choi
>>34035239

You have enough potential content for months and months of social isolation. :)

Clemente d'Angelo

Here in Italy the situation is really really bad. I’ve been closed at home for three weeks now for the national lockdown, and we don’t know when the situation is going back to normal. Stay safe Clint!

Anonymous

In these troubled times, at least we have Cool Crab to cheer us up

Anonymous

I really hope you stay safe Clint. Your country's situation is dire, let's not mince words. Thank you for doing you, everyone needs fresh distractions to keep the morale up.

Lennart Sorensen

I remember my dad's 486 in 1992 had a #9 GXi Level 25 video card along with an ATI VGA Wonder XL 1024 (using pass-through because the paradise vga chip on the #9 sucked). 2MB VRAM + 1MB DRAM and a TMS-34020 processor on 16bit ISA (no VLB). For Windows 3.1 and CAD the thing was incredibly fast. Those TIGA chips from TI were quite something at the time. Pretty sure at the time it was more than $1000 for the card though. Was also upgradeable with more ram and an FPU to higher levels for programs that had the ability to use it. Unfortunately it was stolen in 1994 I think it was and replaced with a better 486 with an ATI Mach32 VLB 2MB VRAM card. Those were nice VLB cards.

Anonymous

Keep them coming, these videos are helping me get through this!

GadgetBlues
>>34034038

ET4000 W32 is absolutely the best option, considering performance, compatibility, and Windows drivers as well.

Kris Asick

It's very easy to forget just how massive a difference the video card could make in terms of DOS gaming performance. ;)

Anonymous

So I had one of these with a Mitsubishi Diamondtron 21" Monitor. I had a ton of issues with this card. Since this was the 2nd tier manufacturer, and was much less supported than ATI, you literally would have to swap your Viper, and Speedstar sometimes. The headline here is Aldus Pagemaker. If you did desktop pulishing the extra resolution made a HUGE! difference. I did my college newspaper layout. Up until this point your choice was a Mac with a 9" B&W display, or a 14" color. In spite of this system costing about $5500 (that's what mine cost), or about what a cheap new car cost at that time, it was still cheaper than the best Mac with a 14" color display.

Anonymous

Klondike Social Distancing is the funniest thing I've heard all day.

GadgetBlues
>>34070846

Where Weitek missed the boat was by putting the VGA chip on the board instead of making a coprocessor board with internal pass-through using the VGA option header. Ironically this was common in the Windows 2.0 era with TIGA cards using the TI 34010/34020 accelerator, but fell out of favor, I think largely because a lot of VLB motherboards only had 2 slots. Of course the concept came back later with Voodoo cards but by then the VGA option header was dead so they had to use external pass-through cables.

Uncleawesome

In 1993 I had the presario 425. If I had seen something like this on a 486 in 1993, it would have blown my mind! It was pretty nice to see windows 3.1 in that resolution now also.

Anonymous

PSA: Don't let screensavers slice your eyeballs.

LazyGameReviews
>>34032369

Glad to hear it, Phil! It's tough to stay out of the down-ness these days, I'm currently seeking out any kind of relief myself from other channels.

LazyGameReviews
>>34032951

A lot of the video footage was recorded before the virus, but the audio is quite current and only recorded last week. Nopestradamus.

LazyGameReviews
>>34039095

It's only gotten more intense over there since you posted this, it seems :/ Really wishing you the best, Clemente.

LazyGameReviews
>>34063950

It really is! I never paid much attention to the VGA chipset until building my first VESA-capable system. Almost all the VLB cards I had were garbage, haha.

LazyGameReviews
>>34078670

And I hope that in a decade it's a joke that no one understands, heh. What a time to be alive.

LazyGameReviews
>>34089749

I love my 425, it's such a fun little system. Especially with an Overdrive upgrade. I need to do another video about it, it's been years!