The company I remember talking about some then was Trident. Cheap, fairly good performing by then, and even if not totally compatible, could be made to work.

Many companies came and went in those days. The common cards probably were from companies that had some longer presence by that point, and sold at an inexpensive level. I'd seen some of Oak Technology, Cirrus Logic, and Western Digital, so likely possible found in many machines. I had only knew of Tseng, ATI by name. Others that were around I learned of later. S3 seemed to get popular in the VLB era, and of course with the Virge/Trio, so they were kind of later. There were a few on the way out in '93, so I wouldn't consider them common, but I guess I could give Genoa a mention even if I never have seen their SVGA cards, they did play a role in the industry.

Hi there. I remember that way back in the early-mid 90s my dad had a Trident 8900 in his mighty 386DX-40 PC..
It wasn't slow, so I think it might have been the 8900D version, which was a successor to the fairly quick 8900CL.

Some more infos on this site (I'm not affiliated):

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturers/trident.php
https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php

Yes, the Trident 8900 series cards were one of the most common for 486 class PCs. Maybe the second most common were the Cirrus Logic GD5420 series.

Some french ads of the time, in december 1992

And june 1993

On our home 486 dx 33, we had a Trident. I don't know which model, probably ISA, but I had to run the VESA vbe to be able to play Little Big Adventure in 94. At work, my father and the other workers had a Tseng 4000 to run Autocad on a 486 dx 50 or better. I kept the manual of a Tseng 3000 so I guess someone had one.

Little Big Adventure had various drivers for each card and a generic vesa one. The game came out in october 1994, the readme list some cards that are compatible. I couldn't run the Trident one, only the VESA one after I ran the Vesa bios extension.

Ati Chipset Ati Mach32/Mach64 Ati Ultra Pro Ati VGA Wonder Cirrus Logic Chipset CL-GD 542X Chipset Compaq AVGA Chipset Compaq QV […]
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Ati Chipset
Ati Mach32/Mach64
Ati Ultra Pro
Ati VGA Wonder
Cirrus Logic Chipset
CL-GD 542X Chipset
Compaq AVGA Chipset
Compaq QVision
Diamond Speedstar (Tseng)
Diamond Stealth (S3)
Genoa Chipset
HP Ultra (S3)
NCR
NCR 77C22 Chipset
OAK OTI 067/077 Chipset
Orchid Designer VGA (Tseng)
Orchid Pro Designer VGA (Tseng)
Orchid Fahrenheit (S3)
Paradise
Quadram VGA Spectra (Tseng)
Realtek PT-505
Realtek RTG 3105 Chipset
STB Lightspeed (Tseng)
STB VGA EM-16 Plus (Tseng)
STB VGA Extra/EM (Tseng)
S3 Incorporated Chipset
Tecmar VGA/AD (Tseng)
Tseng 3000 Chipset
Tseng 4000 Chipset
Trident VGA
T8800/T9400 Chipset
Western Digital Chipset
WD90CXX Chipset

Realtek RTG3105's were also common.

I used to see a fair few Chips and Technologies cards around https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturer … ndt.php#CT82C44 etc
They didn't really stand out for gamers or high end autocad or anything though so they have faded into obscurity a bit.

I had various Trident, Tseng Lab, Video Seven, Paradise and Genoa video cards from what I can recall without having to open old crates.

Thank you all! It seems that unless I can find more information on CTC computers, I may never know what card I had. My 486 has an 8mb Mach64 which is overkill for this system, but so far DOS games look good and it has drivers for Windows 3.x. Trident sounds familiar, but I have been reading Vogons posts for many years, so it could be from that, hehehe...

I vaguely recall having a spare card due to either the 2nd or 3rd upgrade, so I think I will research the "best" cards from 1994 as a middle-ground solution.

used this numerous times. it should help you as well.

https://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/historysm.png

pshipkov wrote on 2023-12-31, 20:54:

used this numerous times. it should help you as well.

https://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/historysm.png

Wow! Thank you!