ATI FireGL 4000
The FireGL 4000 was introduced in 1997 as a professional graphics card for use in CAD applications on Windows NT.
*** All information on this page has been kindly contributed by DOS Days contributor Axel Strack ***
Despite being sold by Diamond, the Fire 4000GL was actually a slightly modified versions of the AccelGraphics AccelEclipse II. The main graphics processor is from Evans & Sutherland, which was well known in the flight simulator business, but is rather unknown in the PC market due to its high selling price ($2,995 for the 4 MB version, $3,495 for the 16 MB version). The cards were not widely used and therefore are not very common nowadays.
It was sold with the Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 (a Pentium II-266 with 128 MB of EDO RAM, and 4.3 GB Ultra-Wide SCSI hard disk for $8,580 in September 1997 and later reduced to $6,618 by May 1998) and the Micron Powerdigm XSU (a Pentium II-300 that sold for $6,204 in September 1997).
Technical Data
- 3D graphics processor: RealIMAGE 1000 from Evans & Sutherland
- 2D graphics processor: CL-GD5446 from Cirrus Logic
- Chipset: Mitsubishi 3DPro/2mp
- Memory: 1 MB EDO DRAM for 2D, 15 MB 3DRAM (frame buffer, Z-buffer) and either 4 or 16 MB CDRAM (Cached DRAM, texture memory)
- RAMDAC: Texas Instruments TVP3026 (220 MHz)
- Horizontal frequency: 31.5 - 96 KHz
- Vertical Frequency: 60 - 120 Hz
- Maximum resolution: 1280 x 1024 in True Color (16,7 Mio. Colors)
- Interface: PCI v2.1 (33 MHz / 32 Bit)
- External connectors: 1 x VGA, 1 x Stereo
- Supports DMA bus mastering
Board Revisions
Competition
In the Media
Setting it Up
Diamond used modified drivers for their card. Unfortunately, the OS support for this card is rather limited - only Windows NT drivers exist for Windows NT 3.51 (version 3.51.1057.2138 rel.1098 from 30.10.1998) and for Windows NT 4.0. For the latter one there are versions for Intel x86 CPUs (version 4.00.1381.2221 rel.1198 from 23.11.1998) as well as for DEC Alpha CPUs (version 2.1.0.15 rel.0298 from 13.02.1998). The driver supports OpenGL 1.1.
There are reports where the NT 4.0 x86 driver has successfully been used with Windows 2000/XP, even though the Control Panel was reported to not work. My experiences are that the driver worked in principle, but the hardware mouse cursor did not function, even though it was activated in the Control Panel. This creates screen corruption around the mouse cursor. There also exists a driver for Windows 95, but it will only use the Cirrus Logic, e.g. the 3D part lies completely dormant.
Downloads
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Original Utility Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
VGA BIOS ROM Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
More Pictures
