I'm always looking for old video cards made by STB. I spotted this thing, on ebay. It's cheap, and might be of interest to a collector. I've never heard of the Falcon64 chipset. The date on the card says 1995.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/video/chipsets/
Sierra Semiconductor
Well known DAC maker. Entered graphics chips market, then got out of the business.
SC15064 Integrated DAC, fast bus interface. (Falcon/64)
VGADOC modelist
58h G 800 600 16color
59h G 1600 1200 16color
5Ah G 1280 1024 16color
5Bh G 1280 1024 256color
5Ch G 800 600 256color
5Dh G 1024 768 16color
5Eh G 1024 768 256color
5Fh G 640 480 256color
60h G 1600 1280 256color
69h G 640 480 16Mcolor
6Eh G 640 480 32Kcolor
6Fh G 800 600 32Kcolor
70h G 800 600 16Mcolor
71h G 1024 768 32Kcolor
73h G 1024 768 16Mcolor
75h G 1280 1024 32Kcolor
No hint of it having 2D acceleration so far.
1+1=10
I would expect it probably does have 2D acceleration of some sort. How good it is, I dunno, but by 1995 2D acceleration was pretty much a standard feature, so I really can't conceive of it not having the capability... hell, even the Trident chipsets had acceleration by then.
Well maybe it's special in being one of the worst video chipsets available for the PCI bus? 😜
Y'know, I've had a random thought bouncing around in the back of my mind. At one point, I had a Techworks VLB card with some weird video chip on it. And I'm thinking, it may have been the Falcon64... Sierra Semiconductor rings a bell there, and some Googling shows that Techworks did make a VLB card with the Falcon64.
Now, the reason I remember the thing at all is because of what a f__king PITA it was. I remember it being quite fast in both Win31 and DOS... when it worked. But I also remember screen corruption, random issues with a good many DOS games, and the fact that I could never get it to work in Win95.
So if that is indeed what I had, it would go a long way toward explaining why nobody's ever heard of the Falcon64 chipset, and why Sierra Semiconductor disappeared from the graphics card business.
🤣 It's still available for sale! Don't all rush at once now... 😉
Actually, if shipping from Canada wasn't so expensive, I probably would buy it just to screw around with... even if it sucks, it'd be something interesting for the collection.
Does anybody have Win9x drivers for this card?
Windows 95 | Chaintech 486SPM M102.A | AMD-X5-133ADW or Am486DX4-100 | 48MB SIMM FPM | ATI Rage 3D II+DVD | CT4100 | 8GB CF
Windows 98 | Acorp 6BX86 | Pentium III 900, slotket | 512MB PC100 | Radeon 9250 | SoundForte SF16-FMI-03 | 64GB MicroSD
kolmio wrote on 2023-11-21, 13:09:Does anybody have Win9x drivers for this card?
Yes...
Zaglądali do kufrów, zaglądali do waliz, nie zajrzeli do dupy - tam miałem klimatyzm.
