Eudimorphodon
Veteran Member
This is kind of a far-out one, but maybe someone has a similar config.
I recently stuffed an OAK OTI-077 VGA card in a Tandy 1000 HX via an ISA slot adapter. The OTI-077 has a 16 bit connector but it only has an 8-bit wide BIOS and it seems to otherwise work fine in an 8-bit slot; the Tandy BIOS recognizes it and disables the built-in video as expected, and testing several games, GEOworks, and Windows 2.11 in EGA and VGA modes has all gone relatively smoothly, so I'd say the card basically works.
The one thing I've run into: I had an Oak VGA card many, many moons ago (my first VGA card in a 286 machine back around 1989-ish was an OAK) and I recalled that those cards had a utility which could make it "fake" several legacy cards at a more register-compatible level. (The main use for it back then was to allow games that used the hacked 160x100 CGA "graphics mode", like Round42, to run. Rarely it could also come in handy for faking having a Hercules card.) I tracked down a .zip file of drivers called "OAK-077.ZIP", and in it was a "VGAMODE" utility that offers similar functionality on this card...
The problem is that running this program to set any of the legacy modes results in a hard crash. (It can set extended 132 column text modes, etc, all right.) Wondering if anyone has a similar OAK card in an older Tandy 1000 (SX/TX-era ideally) and has a similar inability to use the legacy emulation. Mostly just curious if this is a unique problem with the HX (Which obviously is about as far from a standard configuration as you can get) or a general Tandy 1000 problem.
Alas I *don't* have a conventional ISA slotted PC to try the VGA card in to absolutely confirm it works there, it is of course possible I have the wrong utility for this exact card. The only reason I know it's an "OTI-077" is a sticker on the BIOS chip, there's no other obvious branding. Card has a single jumper which I think is for setting "VESA mode", that's currently disabled.
I recently stuffed an OAK OTI-077 VGA card in a Tandy 1000 HX via an ISA slot adapter. The OTI-077 has a 16 bit connector but it only has an 8-bit wide BIOS and it seems to otherwise work fine in an 8-bit slot; the Tandy BIOS recognizes it and disables the built-in video as expected, and testing several games, GEOworks, and Windows 2.11 in EGA and VGA modes has all gone relatively smoothly, so I'd say the card basically works.
The one thing I've run into: I had an Oak VGA card many, many moons ago (my first VGA card in a 286 machine back around 1989-ish was an OAK) and I recalled that those cards had a utility which could make it "fake" several legacy cards at a more register-compatible level. (The main use for it back then was to allow games that used the hacked 160x100 CGA "graphics mode", like Round42, to run. Rarely it could also come in handy for faking having a Hercules card.) I tracked down a .zip file of drivers called "OAK-077.ZIP", and in it was a "VGAMODE" utility that offers similar functionality on this card...
The problem is that running this program to set any of the legacy modes results in a hard crash. (It can set extended 132 column text modes, etc, all right.) Wondering if anyone has a similar OAK card in an older Tandy 1000 (SX/TX-era ideally) and has a similar inability to use the legacy emulation. Mostly just curious if this is a unique problem with the HX (Which obviously is about as far from a standard configuration as you can get) or a general Tandy 1000 problem.
Alas I *don't* have a conventional ISA slotted PC to try the VGA card in to absolutely confirm it works there, it is of course possible I have the wrong utility for this exact card. The only reason I know it's an "OTI-077" is a sticker on the BIOS chip, there's no other obvious branding. Card has a single jumper which I think is for setting "VESA mode", that's currently disabled.