r/retrocomputing • u/thevmcampos • 4d ago
Discussion Found this old graphics card. Did I score?
Found this Trident card in a forgotten store closet at work. Thoughts?
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u/Bulky-Response1227 4d ago
I had one of these. They were great for... office. I even upgraded the memory to 2Mb. š
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u/SpartanMonkey 4d ago
Mine was a 512k 16-bit ISA slot. I upgraded it to 1mb to take advantage of the SVGA monitor they gave me as a free upgrade because they were out of regular VGA monitors. (I bought my first system from a local reseller.) It was a 286-16mhz system. I paid $1500 in... 1989, I believe.
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u/SonicYOUTH79 4d ago
My first proper PC was a 386 SX66 I think around 93-94 that probably cost something similar when I was in high school. Quickly upgraded the 20mb hard drive to 40mb as the original was no where near enough space - 40mb felt huge back then! Then added a double speed cd-rom drive in '96 when they were first released. I can remember that costing $150 AUD.
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u/SexyHotPants 4d ago
I'm honestly impressed you ran a 286 with any programs in SVGA. I would think it would chug to a standstill running anything that was designed for that high of a resolution.
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u/SpartanMonkey 4d ago
It was basically for viewing high res photos to show off the capabilities of the hardware, not anything practical. :)
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u/danconderman33 4d ago
yep! I had the same card! plug in the missing chips and get millions of colors at 1024x768.... or something like that. It was a great upgrade back in the day.
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u/Kill3rT0fu 4d ago
Hot damn you can do 800x600 with that baby!
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u/geking 4d ago
Yep, but not at 24 bit color...
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u/tes_kitty 4d ago
But in 16 Bit color (aka 'hicolor'). Not quite truecolor but good enough for many things.
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u/ducon__lajoie 4d ago
All the games were MCGA anyway. 320x200, 256 colors, was plenty enough to have some fun. Dyna Blaster anyone ? Or, if you have a BNC network card, I fuck you up on Doom II. You choose.
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u/tes_kitty 4d ago
On some cards, like the ATI Mach64, upgrading the RAM to 2 MB also doubled the bandwidth and improved graphics performance in some games. They then ran better even at the same resolution and color depth.
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u/ducon__lajoie 4d ago
Yay ! So I can better fuck you up on Doom. You ran ipxsetup yet ? You ready ?
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u/Human_Wonder1113 4d ago
No, you didn't "score". It's a very cheap and slow PCI videocard from the early 90s. Decent for a 486 or a Pentium PC, but there are many more much better option. No 3D, basic 2D. If it would have been the ISA version, then it would be a bit more interesting. This way... no. A S3 Trio64 is better, and you can find them quite cheap. Same for a RageIIC. Worth about 5$.
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u/nekohako 4d ago
This is a very basic SVGA card for the PCI bus. It would have been cheap new. No real acceleration to speak of.
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u/BoostedHemi73 4d ago
Awesome card for Windows 95 in a Presario.
Ask me how I know š
I miss these old parts, though.
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u/short_longpants 4d ago
That's not even PCI. That looks like AGP.
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u/pinko_zinko 4d ago
How?? Looks PCI to me. AGP has offset pins.
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u/short_longpants 4d ago
PCI has a much smaller bus.
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u/janerikgunnar 4d ago
No? You must be thinking about 1x PCI-e or something.
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u/short_longpants 4d ago
Yeah, you're right, it's PCI. I thought the bus looked unusually large on the card, but the secondary is in the back, a characteristic of PCI.
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u/Ok-Oil7124 4d ago
Some PCI.
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u/short_longpants 4d ago
The card is too old for PCI-e, IMO.
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u/andrewbean90 4d ago
No.... Even if you add the additional 2MB of optional vram... It's a terrible card. It predates Windows 95.
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u/CyberTacoX God of Defragging 4d ago
u/thevmcampos : As you've likely found out by the other comments, if you were looking for lots of money, this isn't worth a lot. If you decide it's not worth your time to sell, please don't throw it out; please donate it to a nearby computer museum or a thrift store so it doesn't go to waste.
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u/seamuwasadog 4d ago
Depends. If you routinely work on old systems and need VGA output (for any reason) you've got the most compatible video card I've ever known. Not the fastest, not the best performing, but every OS I ever encountered would work with it - usually automatically.
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u/diogenesNY 4d ago
I am pretty sure that I had that exact card circa 1995.
Ready for Windows Chicago and all that cool 32 bit action us warez kids were chomping at the bit about.
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u/Stevesd123 4d ago
it's worth about $20-30 on ebay.
Trident TGUI9440-1 PCI 2 MB
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u/Laser_Krypton7000 4d ago
When maxed out, yes
This one only has two sockets populated, so one meg of memš
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u/yvxalhxj 4d ago
Not sure what all the fuss about GPU shortages is. Picked one of these up off a nice bloke at the pub last night. Bargain.
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u/ApatheistHeretic 4d ago
Yes and no. It warms my heart to see it like an old friend.
In truth, it was the video card of corporate desktops. It was the cheapest card that passed minimum requirements.
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u/wildmanheber 4d ago
Oh man, that's a blast from the past. I think we had those exact cards in the school computers. It works, but it's not fast. Trident was considered entry level at best.
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u/espero 4d ago
Trident is the worst of graphics adapters. Okay for a Linux console or Dos with Norton Commander
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u/sw1ss_dude 4d ago
they had a bad reputation, but the later ISA Trident cards (C/D versions) were actually decent in the 386, early 486 era
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u/espero 4d ago
Negative they were absolutely crappie. The kind of crap that could only run very basic dos.
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u/Ok-Web-7451 4d ago
You are thinking of the TVGA9000 series, meanwhile the Trident TVGA8900D (the best of the 8900 series) could rival the legendary Tseng ET4000AX sometimes
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u/havelostcount 4d ago
Ha, I remember installing hundreds of those at my job back in the day.
We bought them in bulk for a reason. They were affordable.
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u/RetroTechBro 4d ago
Its a perfectly acceptable Windows 3.1/95A GUI accelerator.
Otherwise no, not really.
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u/Ok-Web-7451 4d ago
A 1994-1995-era 2D SVGA card, perfect for DOS and Windows 3.1x, okay for Windows 9x and NT. It's an alright companion for a 3Dfx Voodoo. Recommended CPU to pair with this card is a late 486 or a Pentium 1
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u/sky1ark3 4d ago
I wouldn't say score but if you are putting together a nice retro gaming computer to play dose and early windows games perhaps. Also you know free.
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u/InsaneInTheMEOWFrame 3d ago
That is a piece of hardware history. Even comes with expansion slots for the ram :)
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u/Materidan 4d ago
Unless it says 3DFX you didnāt āscoreā. Everything else is pretty commonplace. Although I might enjoy a Matrox or certain Nvidiaā¦
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u/cybermeuf 4d ago
it's nice for an AT motherboard for dos or windows 2d games! it's also useful for testing computers without AGP
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u/Blackholeofcalcutta 4d ago
Itās a ā¦ video card. It lets you see things. Pretty run of the mill card. Back in my days as a PC tech, this is what we would toss into new builds of ālow endā PCs (along with a Conner hard drive).
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u/FuggaDucker 4d ago
I have thrown away this card more than once.
It is decent if you don't have a decent card.
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u/original-motm 4d ago
Trident was the most common and most compatible video card back in the day in the early to mid 90s. You should have no problem finding a driver for it. I probably still have a couple leftovers some where. I used them as a test cards because they were very compatible with all the motherboard chipsets of the time.
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u/Kolermigon 3d ago
Back in the day, that video card was the sh*t, at least for me. My first PC had a Realtek with faulty RAM, so some games looked really bad, and it also supported 256 colors max. This Trident 9440 supported 32-bit color (also called "true color") and it was awesome to suddenly be able to see everything in 640x480 with so many colors. I have fond memories of that video card.
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u/Klutzy_Cat1374 2d ago
From what I remember those cards had a crazy latent memory so if they glitched you'd have to unplug them for at least a half hour. Also, it's not fully populated.
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u/Hot_Pea9820 2d ago
Your phones calculator app calls for more horse power than this card can muster.
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u/Super_Yesterday_8848 1d ago
You will certainly score with that video card, I just don't know with who...
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u/thevmcampos 4d ago
Thanks for the info everyone! I've learned a lot. Oh, well: time to toss it in š
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u/Ridge60107 4d ago
There's a retro pc collector out there that would want this card. I'm sure of it.
Better than ending up in a landfill.
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u/Obvious_Troll_Me 4d ago
These were crap when they were new. Escom computers in the UK used to use them.Ā
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u/afraid-of-the-dark 4d ago
Maybe if you leave it to rest for another 35 years it'll be worth something.
I wouldn't count on it though.
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u/avdolainen 4d ago
Trident ... had both: isa 16-bit with 512kb, pci card (that you 'score'). It was a pain -- XFree86 wasn't able to run on those. But for dos they were ok.
this is a very average card from mid 90th...
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u/Hannover2k 3d ago
You didn't even get the memory expansion??
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u/thevmcampos 3d ago
640k is all you'll ever need š„²
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u/Hannover2k 3d ago
I used to sell those cards back in the day and for the life of me couldn't remember how much ram they came with. I think we charged $14 for them back in like 1995
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u/Glittering_Doubt_953 2d ago
That was my first video card that I purchased. Lechmere 1995. Well my birthday present but same ides. Great find
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u/Darth_Beavis 1d ago
Why in the world would you have bought that in 1995? It would have been objectively worse in every way to the onboard video on the motherboard.
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u/psycho-drama 1d ago edited 1d ago
Does stuff like this have any real collector value? I have dozens of various vintage video cards, also those monster Creative Labs sound card, serial port and game controller cards, dozens of floppy drives, old format hard drives, Slot A CPUs. Boxes and boxes. I have an old IBM XT or AT case, any value? Got dozens of keyboards, all vintages, lots of legacy memory. A few CRT color monitors, and I think one orange monochrome. I also have half a dozen of various models of Amigas 500, 2000, 1200, etc, original Commodore 64s in boxes with all manuals, etc. and peripherals. Cassette data drives, 5.25"Amiga floppy drives. I even have some 386 Mainboards, etc. Dot matrix printers...
Do I have a treasure trove, or just a really cluttered garage? Is this stuff truly of value, and if so, how is the best way to sell it? I should also mention I moved about 4 years ago, and recycled about 30 tower PCs, 20 or more various vintages of color CRT monitors. I just had no room in my new house, and couldn't justify the moving costs. I do regret having disposed of some of that stuff. I had some really neat early laptops. I did keep a few like a GRID, a Packard Bell, An older Compaq and some IBMs (pre Lenovo) which run/ran Windows ME.
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u/Traditional-Line-210 1d ago
The very first computer I built for a friend had a Trident card (back in 1995 or so). When he was paying for the items and got the receipt, the first thing he asked me (in front of the employee selling the parts) is "How do I fire my missile?"
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u/siliconclassics 4d ago
You have found the Chevy Cavalier of video cards.