DOS Days

TGUI9440

Launched: 1995
Bus: 16-bit ISA, PCI or VLB
RAMDAC Clock: 108 MHz
Memory Clock: 80 MHz
Memory: 512 KB FPM or EDO (expandable to 2 MB)

The TGUI9440 is a "GUI Accelerator", supporting FPM or EDO DRAM memory from as fast as 45ns down to 80ns on a 64-bit bus. The chip itself has an integrated 24-bit TrueColor DAC.

It supports resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 in 256 colours, 1024 x 768 in 64,000 colours, or 640 x 480 in 16.7 million colours.

Hardware acceleration for the following operations: BitBLT, image and text transfer, line draw, short stroke vector draw, rectangle fills, and polygon fills.

On the VESA Local Bus it runs at 50 MHz while on PCI it runs at 33 MHz, and on ISA it runs at 12 MHz.

Cards that are known to use this chipset are:

• Pine Technology PT-540 (see images below) - FCC ID: HNG94DGIBDS4TPX
• SST-9440 PCI
• VL46A/V3 (unknown FCC ID)

TVGA9440 Datasheet

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TGUI9680 / TGUI9680-1

Launched: 1995
Bus: PCI or VLB
RAMDAC Clock: 135 MHz
Memory Clock: 80 MHz
Memory: 1 MB EDO (expandable to 4 MB)
Price: $29 (2 MB PCI)

The TGUI9680 is a "GUI and video accelerator", supporting FPM or EDO DRAM memory from as fast as 45ns down to 80ns on a 64-bit bus. The chip itself has an integrated 24-bit TrueColor DAC

It supports resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 in 256 colours, 1024 x 768 in 64,000 colours, or 800 x 600 in 16.7 million colours.

On the VESA Local Bus it runs at 50 MHz while on PCI it runs at 33 MHz.

The TGUI9680-1 is a low-power version of the TGUI9680, but also adds acceleration for Cinepak, Indeo and MPEG CODEC standards.

The TGUI9680 can be found on the following graphics cards:

• Asicom Totem64V
• ViewTOP BP-TRX
  

TVGA9680 Datasheet

3DImage 9750 / 3DImage9750

Launched: 1998
Bus: AGP 1x
Memory: 2 MB or 4 MB SGRAM (64-bit data path)
RAMDAC Speed: 230 MHz
Price When New: $65, July 1999: $39 (4 MB)

A cost-effective (at the time) AGP graphics card with very limited 3D acceleration capability. It retailed for around half what a standard 3D AGP graphics accelerator would have cost back in 1998. Cards based on this Trident chipset did usually also have a TV-out feature able to display 640 x 480 on a standard television. With the full 4 MB of RAM installed, screen resolutions of up to 1600 x 1200 at 24-bit colour depths were possible with refresh rates from 60 Hz up to 200 Hz.

Anandtech reviewed the card and concluded with this:

Cards that used the 3DImage9750 chipset include:

• Fastware AG110C
• Fastware AG110G (FCC ID: VGA AG110G)
• Daytona 64T
• TD975J Rev.A
• HK9211 Rev.B2 (TD975A)
• HKG9211 Rev.D2
• UNION TD975A
• Chronos ST-975A Rev.C

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Top image and first image above (both Fastware AG110G) courtesy of DOS Days contributor, targeted.
Last image courtesy of Thiago Perroni.

Blade 3D 9880

Launched: 1998?
Bus: AGP 2x / AGP Pro
Memory: 4 MB or 8 MB SGRAM or SDRAM
Memory Speed: 125 MHz

Much better than its forebear, the 9750, but still not a fast card.

Cards that used the Blade 9880 chipset include:

• VideoExcel Blade3D

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targeted's Blade 3D card.

Thiago Perroni's Blade 3D card.

4DWave-DX

Launched: 1998
Bus: PCI

The 4DWave chipset was a PCI audio chipset from Trident that included an onboard wavetable and support for Microsoft DirectMusic, DirectSound, DirectSound 3D and legacy applications.

It also had 3D positional audio capability that was DirectSound 3D-compatible - this was provided by QSound's Q3D.

The onboard wavetable made use of system memory for its instrument samples - these were in DLS format with 2, 4 or 8 MB sample file sizes.

For legacy applications in pure DOS, both Distributed DMA (DDMA) and non-DDMA PCI chipsets were supported. Having said that, be warned its 'Virtual FM' is utterly terrible, according to a YT video here. Furthermore, many versions of the driver sets available online don't support the loading of software wavetables - this apparently was removed in later drivers, but available in the earliest ones. Out of the box, these drivers usually come with sample sets of 1 MB, 1.5 MB, 2 MB and 6 MB. If you do get to run it in General MIDI mode, it sounds ok under Windows.

You must also install the card into PCI slot 0 to avoid hardware conflicts.

There was a 4DWave-NX chipset that was similar.

"The 4DWAVE-DX is an advanced PCI audio accelerator providing full legacy compatibility, wavetable synthesis, DirectMusic™, DirectSound™, and DirectSound3D™ on a single chip for the high-performance, cost-sensitive consumer market. It supports full SoundBlaster™ compatibility and is fully PC97/PC98 compliant. It is named 4DWAVE as it adds time as the 4th dimension to its interactive 3D positional audio wave streams. The time element includes such effects processing as adding Doppler, Chorus, and Reverb effects on top of the 3D positional audio and wavetable streams.

The 4DWAVE-DX integrates a 64-voice wavetable engine with per voice effect processing capability. It supports the upcoming Microsoft® DirectMusic™ API and is fully compatible with the DLS Level 1 (downloadable samples) specification. The 4DWAVE DX is optimized for Microsoft® Windows® 98 and Windows® NT™5.0 WDM streaming architecture with re-routable endpoint support. 4DWAVE-DX integrates DirectX™ 5 3D positional audio accelerator by incorporating QSound® Labs’ QSoft3D™ technology. It includes DirectSound3D™ acceleration hardware for ITD (Interaural Time Difference), IID (Interaural Intensity Difference), Pan, Delay, and Doppler hardware.

VirtualFM™and VirtualGS™ technologies maintain SoundBlaster™ Pro/16 DOS games compatibility while improving gaming audio quality. The 4DWAVE-DX utilizes a Digital Enhanced Game Port, when coupled with a DirectInput™ driver, can save up to 12% of the CPU overhead nominally required by a conventional analog game port. The 4DWAVE-DX employs a high precision 26-bit digital mixer, providing an accurate 20-bit output and higher than 90dB signal-to-noise ratio when used with a high quality AC ’97 codec.

The 4DWAVE-DX is designed with aggressive power management in mind as well. It is both ACPI-compliant and PCI Bus Power Management Interface (PPMI)-compliant. With a low power 3.3V process and a space conscious 100 LQFP package, the 4DWAVE-DX is well suited for Notebook systems as well.

The 4DWAVE-DX delivers an impressive combination of features and performance to end-users without burdening them on price. By combining PCI Bus Mastering for DirectSound™ acceleration, Hardware Wavetable synthesizer, Digital Enhanced Game Port, and interactive 3D positional audio acceleration through QSoft3D™, the 4DWAVE-DX provides up to a 40% system level performance enhancement over an equivalent ISA audio controller. It delivers high performance, high quality audio, high end features with efficient power management in a single-chip in a space-efficient 100 LQFP package.

It is forward socket-compatible with future 4DWAVE family products. This document will briefly describe signals in future products to enable system designers to accommodate the future 4DWAVE family products with one design, substantially simplifying future design and testing efforts."

The Trident 4DWave-DX can be found on the following cards:

• Hoontech Soundtrack Digital 4DWave NX (note: not the DX variant as described here, but similar)
• EPC-C4DWV840 (see images here)
• Shark Predator 3D

Click here for the 4DWave datasheet.

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