ATi mach8 (1991)
ATI mach8 (1991)
Summary
| Launched | May 1991 | VESA Support | None in the BIOS |
| Bus Type | ISA or Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) | API Support | None |
| Chipset | ATI 38800-1 (Mach8) | Found on Cards | ATI 8514/Vantage ATi 8514/Ultra ATI Graphics Vantage ATI Graphics Ultra ATI VGA Wonder GT |
| Core Clock | ? MHz | ||
| Memory | 512 KB or 1 MB of DRAM or VRAM | ||
| Memory Speed | 80ns | ||
| RAMDAC | Music Semiconductor TR9C1710 or Samsung KDA0476PL (8514/Vantage, 8514/Ultra, Graphics Vantage, Graphics Ultra) Inmos IMSG176J (Graphics Ultra / VGA Wonder GT) |
Competitors | Texas Instruments TMS34010 Texas Instruments TMS34020 S3 86C911 C&T 82C453 Weitek W5086 |
| RAMDAC Speed | 80 MHz |
Introduction
ATI had seen huge success with their first 'Wonder' series of cards from their inception in July 1987, selling well with great reliability, compatibility to respective IBM graphics standards and enhanced features at a competitive price. By 1991, however, the introduction of GUI-based operating systems (Windows 3.0 and OS/2) led to a need for higher resolutions, colour depths and better performance. It was critical for ATI to develop new products that met this need if they were to remain as one of the top hardware manufacturers in the graphics card market.
IBM had already developed the 8514/A graphics adapter in 1987 which answered the call for high resolution - where the VGA standard topped-out at 640 x 480 in 256 colours, the IBM 8514 standard could run at 1024 x 768 at the same colour depth. It also provided a 'Draw Engine' which provided 2D acceleration of some drawing primitives such as bit-block transfers, line drawing, area fills, and rectangles. The only other screen resolution available with the 8514/A was 640 x 480. It was, however, very expensive, and required a special monitor - the card did not sell in great numbers. It was also incompatible with all earlier graphics standards, including VGA, instead using a 'passthrough' to an IBM VGA chip located on the IBM PS/2 motherboard for such operations.
ATI saw another opportunity, as they had done many times before, to take this standard and produce their own compatible chipset and cards that extended the feature set, but at a lower price point. In May 1991, they announced the launch of their ATI 38800 graphics accelerator chip, aka 'mach8'.
Mach8 was able to run in a range of screen resolutions at high refresh rates and added some new features such as hardware-scalable font anti-aliasing called "Crystal Fonts" which gave a much less blocky appearance to text fonts. This meant that even 6pt text was perfectly readable in Windows at 1024 x 768 on a 14" monitor! 13 fonts were provided that could scale in hardware from 2 to 127 points.
Here's a list of all the ATI cards that used the mach8 chip:
| Year | Card | Description | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | ATI 8514/Vantage | Clone of IBM 8514/A with DRAM memory - required a separate VGA card | ? |
| 1991 | ATI 8514/Ultra | Clone of IBM 8514/A with VRAM memory - required a separate VGA card | $599 (512 KB) $799 (1 MB) |
| 1992 | ATI Graphics Vantage | Combined clone of 8514/A coprocessor and SVGA on a single card with 512 KB or 1 MB of DRAM memory | $499 (512 KB) $599 (1 MB) |
| 1992 | ATI Graphics Ultra | Combined clone of 8514/A coprocessor and SVGA on a single card with 512 KB or 1 MB of VRAM memory | $699 (512 KB) $899 (1 MB) |
| 1993 | ATI VGA Wonder GT | Graphics Ultra but with 1 MB of VRAM as standard | ? |
8514/Vantage & 8514/Ultra
ATI's first clones of the IBM original 8514/A graphics adapter were the 8514/Vantage and 8514/Ultra, announced in November 1990 and shipped in 1991. Both Vantage and Ultra had the same capabilities, and were each available in either 512 KB and 1 MB variants. They differed only in memory type used with the Vantage card using standard DRAM and the Ultra using faster VRAM. Factory 512 KB cards could be upgraded to the full 1 MB by installing either eight 256Kx4 80ns DRAMs (Vantage) or four 256Kx4 80ns ZIP memory ICs (Ultra) into the spare sockets. Factory 1 MB cards had all their memory soldered-in.
The cards were somewhat unique in the fact they supported both the Micro Channel Architecture bus and ISA (AT) bus, simply by turning the card upside down (something ATI called 'dual bus flippy') and switching the backplate board to fit on the other side of the card. This backplate board also housed the card's RAMDAC chip.
Priced as low as $599, ATI Technologies' new 8514/Ultra offers an interesting solution to the WYSIWYG schism between monitors and laser printers. Its hardware-based, on-screen anti-aliasing uses 16 levels of gray scale to give the appearance of 300-dot-per-inch output. The proprietary Mach 8 graphics coprocessor generates scalable fonts on-board, rather than going to the system's CPU. According to ATI, this accounts for a conversion rate of 2,400 characters per second on a 6-MHz PC-AT.
In addition, the 8514/Ultra, with 1MB of dual-ported VRAM, supports resolutions of up to 1,024 by 768 pixels with 16 or 256 simultaneous colors in both interlaced and noninterlaced signal output. Designed with both Micro Channel and ISA edge connectors, it is among the first flip-flop boards. ATI also offers a $699 version with integrated VGA circuitry and mouse support.
List price: ATI 8514/Ultra with 512K, $599; with 1MB, $799." PC Magazine, March 1991
Where IBM's 8514/A could only display 1024 x 768 at a flickery 43 Hz, the ATI cards went up to a rock solid stable picture at 76 Hz non-interlaced or 87 Hz interlaced at the same resolution. Of course a suitable multiscan monitor was necessary to output at these high resolutions and vertical refresh rates, such as the NEC Multisync 2A, 3FGx, 4D, 5D, or IBM's 8513/8514/8515 monitors. On the 1 MB variant you could even run 1280 x 1024 in 16 colours.
ATI provided software utilities to allow for the quick setup of graphics modes and refresh rates for your monitor, and these settings were then stored in an EEPROM on the card for instant recall later.
Just like the IBM 8514/A, the ATI cards needed a separate VGA card to even boot up the system. They connected to this other card via a ribbon cable attached to the 26-pin VGA feature connector.
Performance of the 8514/Vantage and 8514/Ultra cards were advertised as being able to run Microsoft Windows five times faster than its direct competitors that were based on the Texas Instruments TMS34010 chip, two times faster than those that used the TMS34020 chip, and 24 times faster than standalone Super VGA cards. Identical claims were made on the retail box of the later Graphics Ultra.
Graphics Vantage & Graphics Ultra
In 1991, ATI launched the Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra. These continued to use the Mach8 chip for 2D acceleration but also provided a VGA Wonder+ chip (28800-1) on the card for compatibility with SVGA and earlier standards. This meant you no longer needed a separate VGA card to be installed in your PC. This VGA Wonder+ chip was the same one being used on the ATI VGA Wonder XL, though on that card you also got the Sierra HiColor RAMDAC - this is missing on the Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra. The VGA Wonder+ chip found on earlier Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra cards was the 28800-5, while later cards appear to have got the 28800-6.
The VGA Wonder+ portion of the card used a separate bank of 512 KB of DRAM video memory, and the Mach8 portion used its own bank(s) of 512 KB or 1 MB of DRAM (on the Vantage) or VRAM (on the Ultra).
Micro Channel Architecture support was dropped on these cards, so they ran only in a 16-bit ISA slot.
They all came with an InPort mouse port on the backplate and came bundled with a 400dpi bus mouse. Software drivers that had been tuned for the Mach8 were also provided for AutoCAD, CADkey, Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Symphony, Ventura Publisher (GEM version), and Windows 3.0. OS/2 Presentation Manager drivers were not available at launch, but arrived shortly after.
Performance of the Graphics Ultra far surpassed that of its main competition at the time, notably cards based on the S3 86C911 and Chips & Technologies 82C453, while the Graphics Vantage was on par with the fastest of the S3 boards.
VGA Wonder GT
In 1993, after fairly sluggish sales of the Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra, ATI rebranded the Graphics Ultra 1 MB to VGA Wonder GT to leverage the "VGA Wonder" moniker that had served them so well.
Like the Graphics Ultra, the VGA Wonder GT came with a separate bank of 512 KB of DRAM for the VGA portion of the card (not upgradeable) and 1 MB of VRAM for the Mach8 accelerator to use. There was never a VGA Wonder GT 512 KB VRAM version released, nor one that was based on the Graphics Vantage.
Supported Graphics Modes
The original IBM 8514/A supported only 640 x 480 or 1024 x 768 resolutions - there was no 800 x 600 or other middling resolutions available. The table below outlines the various resolutions and refresh rates supported by the ATI mach8 cards:
| Resolution | 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra | Graphics Vantage, Graphics Ultra or VGA Wonder GT |
| 640 x 480 | 60 - 72 Hz | 60 - 72 Hz |
| 800 x 600 | 56 - 72 Hz (ni) or 95 Hz (i) | 56 - 72 Hz (ni) or 95 Hz (i) |
| 1024 x 768 | 60 - 76 Hz (ni) or 87 Hz (i) | 60 - 76 Hz (ni) or 87 Hz (i) |
| 1280 x 1024* | 87 Hz (i) | 87 Hz (i) |
* (i) = interlaced, (ni) = non-interlaced
A glaring omission here is of course the lack of support for any colour depths beyond 8-bit (256 colour). Even if you replace the RAMDAC with a HiColour/True Colour one, the BIOS and drivers also need to be programmed to support them. As mentioned earlier, it's not like 64K colours was unheard of - the more recent VGA Wonder cards often either came with a HiColor DAC as standard or it was a cost option. So these cards can be considered a trade-off of getting a higher resolution for lower colour depth.
Memory
Both the earlier ATI 8514-series and later ATI Graphics-series in the Mach8 family were available in 512 KB and 1 MB variants (accessible by the Mach8 chip), and both capacities were then available in either DRAM form or the faster VRAM. This meant you had four choices of card in the earlier 8514-series and 4 choices in the Graphics-series that succeeded it:
| Part # | FCC ID | Card | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATI 8514/Vantage 512 KB | 512 of DRAM for Mach8 chip | ||
| ATI 8514/Vantage 1 MB | 1 MB DRAM for Mach8 chip | ||
| EXMULTRA | ATI 8514/Ultra 512 KB | 512 KB VRAM for Mach8 chip | |
| 109-00113-20 or 109-00117-10 | EXMULTRA1 | ATI 8514/Ultra 1 MB | 1 MB VRAM for Mach8 chip |
| EXMCOMBODM? | ATI Graphics Vantage 512 KB | 512 KB DRAM for Mach8 chip + 512 KB DRAM for VGA Wonder | |
| 109-00118-40 | EXMCOMBODM1 | ATI Graphics Vantage 1 MB | 1 MB DRAM for Mach8 chip + 512 KB DRAM for VGA Wonder |
| 109-00115-40 or 109-00115-50 | EXMCOMBOVM | ATI Graphics Ultra 512 KB | 512 KB VRAM for Mach8 chip + 512 KB DRAM for VGA Wonder |
| 109-00115-40 | EXMCOMBOVM1 | ATI Graphics Ultra 1 MB | 1 MB VRAM for Mach8 chip + 512 KB DRAM for VGA Wonder |
| 109-00115-40 or 109-00115-50 | EXMCOMBOVM1 | ATI VGA Wonder GT | 1 MB VRAM for Mach8 chip + 512 KB DRAM for VGA Wonder |
Unlike the later mach32 which had a shared memory space for both the VGA and accelerator modes, the Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra had completely separate memory banks and memory controllers for the VGA and accelerator modes. Both DRAM and VRAM chips had speed ratings of 80ns, and the DRAM chips used for the VGA [Wonder+] chipset portion were also rated at 80ns.
32-bit data path to onboard memory, 1 MB VRAM = 40 MB/sec bandwidth.
Ports
In addition to the standard 15-pin DSUB for analogue video output, some Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra cards (including the VGA Wonder GT) came with an InPort S-video mouse port on the backplate (mini DIN), and a 400dpi InPort mouse was bundled with these cards.
I'm not aware of any of these cards being developed for the OEM market (who would likely get a cost-reduced version without the bus mouse port), and yet many cards do not have this port.
Switches
All mach8 cards are fully Plug & Play, so no hardware configuration / jumpers / DIP switches need to be set. There are a few optional jumpers, however:
JU1 (above the 16-bit portion of the ISA bus edge connector):
- Bottom two pins closed = 16-bit coprocessor bus I/O selected
- Top two pins closed = 8-bit coprocessor bus I/O selected
JU2 (in between the two large ICs):
- Closed = Bank 0 populated, Bank 1 empty (512 KB cards)
- Open = Both banks populated (1 MB cards)
JU3 = IRQ enable / disable (off = disable, on = enable)
The other two jumpers to the right of JU3 (JU4 and JU5) are apparently to be left alone at their factory settings. However, they are possibly used for:
- BIOS ROM 8-bit / 16-bit ?
- Bus mouse port enable/disable ?
- VGA bus I/O 8-bit / 16-bit mode ?
The Video BIOS
Mach8 BIOS part numbers are shown in the table below:
| BIOS | Card |
|---|---|
| 113-01113 | Mach8 only, so suitable for ATi 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra |
| 113-01117 | Mach8 only, so suitable for ATi 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra |
| 113-11700 | Mach8 only, so suitable for ATi 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra |
| 113-11900 | Mach8 only, so suitable for ATi 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra |
| 113-14500 to 14501 | Mach8-only, so suitable for ATi 8514/Vantage or 8514/Ultra |
| 113-01115 | Mach8 + VGA Wonder, so suitable for ATI Graphics Vantage, Graphics Ultra or VGA Wonder GT |
| 113-11502 to 11510 | Mach8 + VGA Wonder, so suitable for ATI Graphics Vantage, Graphics Ultra or VGA Wonder GT |
| 113-11800 to 11802 | Mach8 + VGA Wonder, so suitable for ATI Graphics Vantage, Graphics Ultra or VGA Wonder GT |
Upgrades and Successors
After the development and release of the mach8, ATI immediately got to work on a successor. This would be the mach32 accelerator, which integrated both VGA and 2D accelerator into a single chip. It also had a 32-bit data path to onboard memory, and this memory would be shared between the VGA portion and the 2D accelerator portion.
The mach32 was released in April 1992, with their first cards that used the VESA Local Bus interface, and followed up in 1993 with several more mach32 cards on the then-new PCI interface.
Reception
In 1992, reviews of both the ATI Graphics Vantage and ATI Graphics Ultra were very positive, and the cards were known to be breaking performance records (especially the Ultra). The only negative was that this performance came at a high price. ATI's 'Wonder' cards continued to be the company's main revenue stream, and sales of these premium cards was fairly low. The competition at the time such as those sporting an S3 chipset were producing graphics accelerators at half the price but still with acceptable performance for Windows use.
An advert for the 8514/Ultra, Graphics Vantage and Graphics Ultra, October 1991 (left) and April 1992 (right)
ATI attempted to attract more sales in 1993 by launching the VGA Wonder GT which was just a rebranded Graphics Ultra 1 MB. Actual 'street' prices of the VGA Wonder GT in November 1993 were down to $179, and by July 1994 you could pick one up for $155.
Images
The cards shown in this section illustrate the various model variants in the mach8 series. I do not have any pictures of an 8514/Vantage - let me know if you can add to this!
8514/Ultra 1 MB (109-00113-20) (1990):
Graphics Vantage 512 KB (upgraded to 1 MB) (109-00118-40) (1990):
Graphics Vantage 1 MB (109-00118-41) (1990):
Graphics Ultra 512 KB (upgraded to 1 MB) (109-00115-50) (1992):
Graphics Ultra 1 MB (109-00115-40) (1990):
Graphics Ultra 1 MB (109-00115-41) (1990):
VGA Wonder GT (109-00115-40) (1990):
Downloads
Click on an icon in the table below to download the fille.
Mach 8 DOS Tools A cut-down version of the Ultra-8514 utility tools. Allows you to test the card, set the startup video mode, and change the video mode. |
Mach 8 Windows 3.1 Drivers Windows 3.1 drivers for Mach 8 cards. Use the LOADER utility to install. |
Mach 8 Windows 3.1 and 3.11 Drivers ATI mach8 revision 3.0 256 color ATI Desktop driver for Windows 3.1 and 3.11. Runs on Mach8 cards with 1MB of accelerator memory, is faster than previously released drivers with an emphasis on stability. This driver does not support 16 color (4bpp) mode. |
Mach 8 Windows 3.1 Drivers Windows 3.1 drivers for Mach 8 cards. Will work only if you have previously installed an ATI Windows 3.1 driver. If you have not done so, run the installation disk #1 that came with your video card and install the Windows 3.1 driver, before running this driver upgrade install program. |
Mach 8 / Mach 32 Windows 3.1 Drivers Windows 3.1 drivers for Mach 8 cards. Will work only if you have previously
installed an ATI Windows 3.1 driver. If you have not done so, run the
installation disk #1 that came with your video card and install the
Windows 3.1 driver, before running this driver upgrade install program. |
Mach 8 / Mach 32 Windows NT Beta Drivers For the MARCH 1993 Beta Release
|
