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Home Forums 68kMLA 2 Power Macs from Craigslist for $50(G3 Upgrade Mania) — #8
Post #8 by Bunsen
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryPowerPC
Post DateSat, 7 May 2011 - 07:56
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/2-power-macs-from-craigslist-for-50-g3-upgrade-mania.22977/
Post
some sort of video card attached to it with 4 SIMM slots on it
What you have there is the apple HPV (High Performance Video) card. There are two versions:

  • 1MB of onboard VRAM, expandable to 2MB with 4 x 256k VRAM SIMMs
  • 2MB of onboard VRAM, expandable to 4MB with 4 x 512k VRAM SIMMs


These are regarded as amongst the best available video upgrades for an x100 PowerMac, as they use a full 64 bit data path and are PDS (Processor Direct) rather than stuck on the Nubus bottleneck.

They also, as you can see, can be mounted on the fast side of a G3 upgrade, where they can make use of the much faster cache on the upgrade module.

As the onboard video in the x100 series uses main system RAM as VRAM ("vampire video") it is hideously slow compared to an AV, HPV or even most Nubus cards with dedicated VRAM.

If there are S-Video ports (same connector as ADB) above & below the DB-15 Mac Video Port, you've got the HPV VidCap Card, otherwise it's a nice Video Card.
Trash, that card is called the AV card, not the HPV. It's not as fast as the HPV, but as you say, it does give you S-Video in and out.

You can find out just about everything about these and related cards here:

http://kan.org/6100/graphics.html

mp.ls