that 32-bits VESA was still a pain to work with.  It wasn't very well designed to handle more than 1 card.  I've had display get corrupted and hard drives not work because of capacitance and interference.  It took me quite a while to find a 32-bits video card and 32-bits IO card that worked together for my then 486DX2.  I'm glad they went PCI which behaved a whole lot better shortly after rather than try to keep the overly long and flaky 32-bits slot and added an extra 32-bits upgrade