New X600's for SNAP users in the UK

[Olafur Gunnlaugsson]

Just a heads up for those in the UK that still use Scitech SNAP,

A gent on Ebay has new stocks of the 256MB dual screen DELL X600's that he is selling for about 13 smackers inc. postage and both types of adapter cables

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-Radeon-X600-256Mb-PCIe-F9595-/290592069592?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item43a8a317d8

the X600 is one of the few chipsets were SNAP supports both DVI and VGA connectors and in addition is fully accelerated.

Important to get the 256Mb version since there were gazillion different versions of the X300/X550/X600 that are all more or less the same chip with some features enabled so on so forth, only the 256 X600 are guaranteed to have full bandwidth, the 128 versions of this Dell card for instance were much slower.

[ivan]

Good find, but I do have to ask who doesn't use SNAP?

We have a range of ATI X550, X600 and X700 cards as well as a couple of NVIDIA FX5700 all quite happy to drive monitors to 1920 x 1200 @ 16m colours.

[Olafur Gunnlaugsson]

Good find, but I do have to ask who doesn't use SNAP?

We have a range of ATI X550, X600 and X700 cards as well as a couple of NVIDIA FX5700 all quite happy to drive monitors to 1920 x 1200 @ 16m colours.

I had problems with SNAP and some newer motherboards, and a few years back with some ATI motherboard chipsets as well, and I also have a Nvidia Quadro board that I love but for some reason SNAP sees it at install time and has it accelerated, but after two boots refuses to see it as anything but VESA. That sort of minor niggles, SMP issues and people that  multi boot with Win/Mac OX/Linux/BSD/Whatever and understandably want to use newer cards even if it means they are unaccelerated under eCS are the reason people are looking more at Panorama these days

I use SNAP, and an X600 256MB BTW, but I literally built the computer specifically to run eCS, emperoar and SNAP and I am not sure everyone is willing to go that far ......

[Doug Bissett]

I do have to ask who doesn't use SNAP?

Well, it depends on what the hardware is. On my old systems, where SNAP knows how to do acceleration, I use SNAP. On my newer systems, where SNAP can allow Doodle's Screen Saver to turn the screen off, I use SNAP. On other systems, (laptops), I use Panorama. Panorama seems to be a little faster than SNAP (in VESA mode), but it does not allow the DSS turn off (when it will work with SNAP). I also use VBox under windows, and the eCS guests use the modified GRADD driver (SNAP, or Panorama, simply adds overhead).

Apparently, SNAP is also not SMP friendly, although I can't say that I ever had a problem with it. I think that depends on exactly what the hardware is.

[Daniel]

As the ATI Radeon X850 was the last card supported by SNAP, and X850 XL 16 lane PCIx cards were being sold for $10.40 new, I bought a pair. I haven't had any problems running with a quad core AMD and it IS fast, but the DOS and Win16 problems are a pain as I have to use several old CAD programs.

I know that the problem is with vsvga.sys not being updated and have tried all the possible workarounds to no avail. So...

What is the fastest PCIx card supported fully by SNAP and vsvga.sys?

[Doug Bissett]

What is the fastest PCIx card supported fully by SNAP and vsvga.sys?

I am not sure if there ever was such a thing.

My suggestion is to use DOSBOX for DOS, and install the real Win31, with ALL of the extra bells and whistles, then use that for your DOS/WIN31 work. Some experimenting may be required to get it working the way you want it, but it seems to work okay for what I use it for (not much).

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/emulator/DOSBOX0.74.EXE

Good luck...

I should note, that I don't even install the DOS/WIN support in OS/2 any more. DOSBOX doesn't need it.

[Andi B.]

Daniel - I think Matrox G550 is fully supported by SNAP but check the readme. Although at the time SNAP was developed probably only the PCI version was available. Until now a G550 with PCIe can be bought as new card. AFAIR someone reported the PCIe version works too with SNAP and OS/2 but slower compared to up to date cards. Basically it's the old G550 PCI version with an additional PCI/PCIe bridge.

OTOH my ATI X300 works including DOS/WinOS2. But hard get new especially with 2 DVI outputs.

[Olafur Gunnlaugsson]

Daniel - I think Matrox G550 is fully supported by SNAP but check the readme. Although at the time SNAP was developed probably only the PCI version was available. Until now a G550 with PCIe can be bought as new card. AFAIR someone reported the PCIe version works too with SNAP and OS/2 but slower compared to up to date cards. Basically it's the old G550 PCI version with an additional PCI/PCIe bridge.

OTOH my ATI X300 works including DOS/WinOS2. But hard get new especially with 2 DVI outputs.

Actually the AGP 4xx cards were available including the MAX card that is probably the fastest 2D card ever available for OS/2 (according to Scitech anyway) , but alas before mine blew up I never had the common sense to try it sing SNAP since the native drivers were perfectly OK. It is possible that the PCIe 450 cards work with SNAP although that is not a given thing.

Actually all MAX cards seem to have blown up because they have not been seen on the second hand market for the last few years

[Daniel]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I have two other computers so I will get by in any case.

One is a Hannspree laptop which works with the latest eCS beta quite well, except for the lack of ethernet or wifi drivers. The bios has support for the touchpad and the SD card reader. Eventually this should work well.

The second is  an HP s7220n slimline. It is maxed out with an SSD, 1G of memory and the fastest processor the MB can take, 2.26 GHz single processor. It has a single slot, a PCI. I took out the dialup modem and put in a Radeon HD5450 half height PCI video card. Of course it is using Panorama. I won't be watching much video with it but after changing vsvga.sys to vvga.sys it works perfectly as a DOS and WIN16 (and eCS) machine. It is small, quiet and fits on my workbench. It should even run (barely) 32 bit Win 8.1.