I have about ten of these, I assume they were for the Playstation CD writer. This is a strange one. A power VR card with no video out? Any ideas? It was in a box of dreamcast stuff. This looks like a really old Psygnosis Saturn card, but I have no specific model information. Any help would be appreciated. If you have any ideas better than what I am assuming, let me know.
the powervr card in the 90s matrox teamed up with them and created a addon 3d accelerater which had no video out it was just added to a normal vga card maybe this is a companion of this addon card or a similar technology the addon was relativly cheap its name was matrox m3d here is a picture i found on the web if i dig enough i know i have one of these around here by myself
Makes sense that the PowerVR card was found in the box of dreamcast stuff, as the dreamcast used a PowerVR gpu.
The PowerVR card was a PC 3D accelerator that was sold when dedicated 3D cards were all the rage. The card was used in conjunction with the standard 2D card in your system (like the original Voodoo) but didn't have an external loop. It was actually quite popular among the hardcore at the time of its launch as the lack of an external connection meant you could remove the blank faceplate and it was slim enough to fit in a shared PCI/ISA slot that was already populated with an ISA card. Specific PowerVR accelerated games were released for the cards, but in the end it didn't take off as the Voodoo line skyrocketed in popularity thanks to Quake. Namco demoed a version of Rage Racer for the card, but never shipped it. Those same PowerVR cards were shipped to developers in the earliest DC dev kits (I don't even really want to call them dev kits as they weren't even alpha). It wasn't anywhere near a full system, but rahter designed to get developers familiar with a rev of PowerVR silicon on the PC platform so they would know what they were working with when DC dev kits were finally ready. -hl718
What PC games worked with the PowerVR cards? I think I remember some older games saying something about them in the readme files, but can't remember which ones. Did the games have to be specifically written for the card (using something like Glide for Voodoos) or did they work with Direct3D and OpenGL?
i think they where patches out for the m3d games that supported the card let me think... mdk murder death kill from shiny and i remember POD - Planet of Death was in the box when i bought the card was a nice card and i bought it cheap a year or two after it was outdated =)
PlayStation writer Where's GSL when you need him? He has the CD-R that's the companion for that Sony card... ~Krelian
It's not necessarily SCSI, it could just use a "SCSI connector". The actual card is very simplistic so it must be heavily software driven. Is the card's name "COH-2000"? Google finds nothing.
The Sony CD writer was certainly a SCSI (and a slow and expensive one at that) but I can't remember whether it used a propriatory controller card. Probably just came with a Sony card rather than requiring it. I didn't install it, only used it. In fact, thinking about it, I know we lent ours out to other developers, but I think we only gave them the external drive. I don't know why Sony required you to use such a crap drive that was so difficult to get hold of though.
Still got the drive, but it's sadly just a CD-ROM, not a CD-R. As to being SCSI, I can't really imagine WHY they'd put such a screwy connector on the drive if it WASN'T SCSI - wouldn't it have been cheaper/easier to build a normal parallel connector in instead? Anyways, shameless plug: The drive is still up for grabs if someone can use it - it's just collecting dust here. PM me, but please don't clutter up the thread if you're interested - I don't want to be responsible for a massive derailing.
that matrox card u found in the sega dreamcast box is an old stile gfx upgrade card for pc i have one put it next to your old voodoo 1 or other gfx card and it would team up to make it better i got an old pc mag with it in it to but i dont have a scannerand no im not talking about the old 3dfx voodoo 2 sli either
You've had the answer on the PowerVR, that's a bog standard one - that's what they were like. As for the odd Psy-Q-like card, that's probably what it is! AKA a SCSI card
