jeremywork
Well-known member
I didn't mean to wait so long to post this back up, but despite losing the thread I think I have most of the attachments saved locally. Sincere apologies if any of this is misattributed. Hope it helps to have it back!
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I think @Nathan_A was the thread initiator, with a post about a Rev D Pickles XA from Yahoo Auctions. Card seems capable of 1376x1024 output with a maximum virtual resolution of 2048x1024. At the time of posting the driver was yet unknown.
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I later found the earlier lower end version of this card, the Rev C XA/Lite. This one only does 1024x768 with a maximum of 1024x1024 virtual, and cannot change resolutions on the fly. @pcamen and I tried to find a reader for the ROM chip but found that it was not readily available on the market.
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@micheledipaola had purchased a different card (either Pickles 24A or 8.24A+, don't remember) and called attention to the DIP switch settings in some available auction photos. No driver was available for this one either.
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Some PDF documentation was located by various members, and @taddy helped to translate some of the Japanese to English for us (Thank you!) Unfortunately I don't have the translated passages saved.
"eizo1994_8.pdf" shows the different features of XA/Lite, XA, and XA/Pro.
"PicklesXA_manual.pdf" is the more complete manual for the XA Series.
"PicklesXAP12_15.pdf" shows the detailed DIP settings for the XA Series.
"Shinbayashi_board.pdf" is a complete listing of the entire lineage of BUG video products.
"Pickles24A_manual.pdf" is the complete manual for the 24A card.
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I don't recall who here was able to make contact with the cards' original designer, Mr. Shinbayashi, who joined the forum as @tshinba and provided us with original driver files for XA, 24, and 24AW cards which were unfortunately missing their resource forks. "cdev.zip" contains these files. A later attempt at recovering the XA series driver was successful and included resource forks, enabling acceleration on @Nathan_A's card and mine. "Pickles Utilities.img.hqx" contains these files.
@tshinba also linked us to a beautiful gallery of BUG products. I don't have the link but I do have the photos and I will post them as a reply in this thread.
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Finally, I was able to find a Rev C XA card myself. I can confirm that stacking the RAM together in the XA/Pro configuration changes nothing in the control panel for the XA, so the ROM from an XA/Pro would be needed to upgrade the XA to XA/Pro. The attached RAMDAC is also the 135MHz part, indicating a different one was used for each speedgrade. I was able to grab a couple 200MHz parts, but don't feel the need to get it swapped until the ROM situation can be sorted. 1376x1024@24 is certainly no slouch of a Nubus resolution, even if 2048x1536 remains just out of reach
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I think @Nathan_A was the thread initiator, with a post about a Rev D Pickles XA from Yahoo Auctions. Card seems capable of 1376x1024 output with a maximum virtual resolution of 2048x1024. At the time of posting the driver was yet unknown.
---
I later found the earlier lower end version of this card, the Rev C XA/Lite. This one only does 1024x768 with a maximum of 1024x1024 virtual, and cannot change resolutions on the fly. @pcamen and I tried to find a reader for the ROM chip but found that it was not readily available on the market.
---
@micheledipaola had purchased a different card (either Pickles 24A or 8.24A+, don't remember) and called attention to the DIP switch settings in some available auction photos. No driver was available for this one either.
---
Some PDF documentation was located by various members, and @taddy helped to translate some of the Japanese to English for us (Thank you!) Unfortunately I don't have the translated passages saved.
"eizo1994_8.pdf" shows the different features of XA/Lite, XA, and XA/Pro.
"PicklesXA_manual.pdf" is the more complete manual for the XA Series.
"PicklesXAP12_15.pdf" shows the detailed DIP settings for the XA Series.
"Shinbayashi_board.pdf" is a complete listing of the entire lineage of BUG video products.
"Pickles24A_manual.pdf" is the complete manual for the 24A card.
---
I don't recall who here was able to make contact with the cards' original designer, Mr. Shinbayashi, who joined the forum as @tshinba and provided us with original driver files for XA, 24, and 24AW cards which were unfortunately missing their resource forks. "cdev.zip" contains these files. A later attempt at recovering the XA series driver was successful and included resource forks, enabling acceleration on @Nathan_A's card and mine. "Pickles Utilities.img.hqx" contains these files.
@tshinba also linked us to a beautiful gallery of BUG products. I don't have the link but I do have the photos and I will post them as a reply in this thread.
---
Finally, I was able to find a Rev C XA card myself. I can confirm that stacking the RAM together in the XA/Pro configuration changes nothing in the control panel for the XA, so the ROM from an XA/Pro would be needed to upgrade the XA to XA/Pro. The attached RAMDAC is also the 135MHz part, indicating a different one was used for each speedgrade. I was able to grab a couple 200MHz parts, but don't feel the need to get it swapped until the ROM situation can be sorted. 1376x1024@24 is certainly no slouch of a Nubus resolution, even if 2048x1536 remains just out of reach