(no subject)

[cabbitzilla]

This entry is primarily notes to myself, in a location where they won't be misplaced. I'll cut-tag it to spare you all the pain. Those of you that are ubergeeks, well... it /might/ be interesting.


Vid Card notes:
Millenium G200 - G2+/MILA/*BN/20
--standard G200 AGP 2x model with SGRAM socket
--8meg memory on card
----8meg expansion module available via Matrox, roughly $45
----Rainbow Runner G Series tv tuner/video editing PCI add-on card available via Matrox, roughly $89
----Matrox Hardware DVD Decoder daughter card seems to be discontinued. EBay or reseller, perhaps?
------Is it even worth the cost?
** Although the Kyro-based Hercules Prophet II MX seems delightfully stable with WinXP, it -did- have issues with XFree86, and with Win95/98/ME. My ATI-based TV tuner card has serious issues with any vidcard that's not also ATI-based... these notes come from me ransacking my spare parts bins trying to find such a beasty.

Voodoo 3 2000 - V32316
--16meg on the card, PCI formfactor, and I'm fairly sure it's not worth the trouble to go any further. Poor thing probably needs a good burial.
----Revised: I've found it a good home, so at least it's not headed for the crusher.

Diamond Viper 550 SDR PCI 16megTV - A long name for a fairly small card
--16megs on the board
--GPU fan (groans, God this fan is LOUD!)
--Daughter card connector
Diamond Viper 770 Ultra - ATX 2x16
--32megs on the board
--GPU fan
--Daughter card connector
**Diamond Multimedia's been bought out so many times my head spins... current holder is SonicBlue, who's filing for Chapter 13 reorganization. That'll fill you with confidence... and I've got these two vid cards, a TV2001 vidcard, and the Monster Sound MX 300 -AND- MX 400 soundcards. Bloody wonderful.
**Final issue drivers and bios upgrades downloaded for both cards. No apparent sign of availability of daughter cards. That's truly a shame; the V550 and V770U cards are both solid performers, and would be (to my mind) worth upgrading to the fullest. The fan on the V550, when gently pried from the heatsink, has an oil aperture, so I'm hoping the groaning can be alleviated... important to me, since the V550 is the one with the TV-Out port.


There will likely be more geekiness to follow. Pardon me as I try to get my gear sorted and updated.

*hugs*
~Ellie-chan

Comments

[wibbble]

The nice thing about being a Mac geek is that you don't need to care about pretty much all the sort of stuff you've just posted about.

The annoying thing is that you don't have the option to care, either. ;o)

(I wish I could upgrade my graphics card, but I can't even open my machine - it has to be opened (and more importantly, closed) carefully, since there's loads of issues with heat conductivity and I have no desire to cause my computer to melt itself. (The LCD iMacs have a single fan at the top cooling the entire system, PSU, CPU, graphics card, and all. Thankfully G4 chips tend to run comparatively cool (it's not unheard of for PPC systems to run with no fan on the CPU at all), but offsetting that is that the whole thing is in a fairly small space, so there's not a lot of room for heat dissipation. Which is where I came in, unable to open the system 'cause it has to be put back together right.

Such a comparison to my last Mac, where to open it you just pulled a latch on the side and the whole side opened up. You could even run it like that (for a short while - it had no fan over the CPU, but it did use the PSU fan to cool the graphics card).

*nods*

[elisabeth.livejournal.com]

To be honest, the inability to choose specifics is why I've always avoided Macs for my personal use. Given my usage, and the quirks of my eyes, I -must- be able to reconfigure or change the video adapter to something that I can use. Every one of the Macs and PPC's I've used have given me a blinding headache after about an hour in front of it. I choose my display adapters -very- carefully, oftentimes buying something that's considered 'inferior' for the simple reason that I had complete control over picture gradients and refresh rates. Most early Diamond adapters, all of the old Western Digital adapters, early Voodoo cards... they all have a 'flicker' to them that most folks can't see. For me, it's =painful=.

TNT2 cards, Kyro cards, a very few Riva128 cards, and the newer ATI chipsets don't flicker. I've a Kyro in this machine now, the V550 and V770 are both TNT2 or Riva 128 cards. The Matrox card is solid also. So I cling to my aging cards, and pray that as time goes by that someone will care enough to continue to update the drivers. Hence my questing for drivers and manuals and upgrade information.

And... SONICBlue's lame attempts at 'legacy support' are pathetic. It would have been better by far to let Diamond fold, so that the users that -cared- could do the support.

*hugs*
~Ellie-chan

Re: *nods*

[wibbble]

Well, Macs have been using ATI cards for years, and of late also have nVidia stuff too.

Flicker, though, would surely be more likely to be down to the monitor than the graphics card?

Have you noticed it even on newer Macs, like the LCD iMacs?


I remember Diamond MM well. My first MP3 player had their logo on it. :o)

RE: *nods*

[elisabeth.livejournal.com]

The older ATI cards did it to me too, sadly. And I thought for a long time that it was the monitor... discovered that it wasn't when I did a major equipment shuffle at work. The newer Macs seem to be just fine for me; a close friend has a G3 (beautifully designed machine, from a hardware standpoint) that doesn't bother me at all. The change in the Macs seems to have occured right after the last of the PPC 'clones' were discontinued.

As for Diamond, I can't seem to find /ANY/ information as to daughter cards. I know there was -something- for it, but I can't even find reference materials or specs of proposed expansions. Very -very- frustrating.

~Ellie-chan

Re: *nods*

[wibbble]

*thinks*

The Blue&White G3? (My old, and now my mother's current, machine was a revision a of that model.) I think that was the first model that got a RAGE128 card - prior to that they'd been using RAGEII's. iMacs continued to use those for a while, too, and the laptops eventually got RAGE128 mobility cards.

Apple've kept the graphics cards in Macs fairly up to date, but you still don't get a whole lot of choice - either an ATI Radeon or an nVidia GeForce, with varying specs according to the model (this iMac has a GF2MX, the top-end iMac has a GF4MX, G4s can pick between GF4Ti's and top-end Radeons).

Re: *nods*

[elisabeth.livejournal.com]

Flipping through entries, I came across this one... and amused by the fact that the G3 I mentioned is the one sitting at my elbow. :p

*hugs*