Help Identifying These Video Cards

[LaPorta]

Hey everyone,

Got these two video cards in my pile I know nothing about. One I can see is a Mac Radeon 9250. The other is an Apple Card with VRAM slots. I’m not sure what Macs either of these will work with, or what they are good for.

 

[joevt]

The Radeon 9250 probably works in any Mac with a PCI slot. Mac OS 9 or OS X.
It has 2D and 3D acceleration.

The VRAM card is for the Power Mac 7100? Probably has just 2D acceleration if any. More VRAM means higher resolutions or color depths.
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/companies/item/46-apple-power-macintosh-7100-vram-expansion-card
The one for the Power Mac 8100 has a different part number. I don't know if they're interchangeable.

 

[Powerbase]

The first is a Radeon 9200 Mac Edition 128MB. The second looks like the HPV PDS video card from the first gen Powermacs, just a fast framebuffer.

 

[killvore]

I think the HPV cards are interchangeable between 6100/7100/8100 - I stuck my 8100 HPV card in my 6100 to verify that the 6100 was functioning, since I was selling it. Not pretty - it sticks out and you can't close the lid - but worked fine!

This is the HPV from my 8100

 

[Powerbase]

I mean the 9200 Mac Edition was a good OS X card for the PCI macs (or any Mac with PCI). I remember it being very speedy, especially when you enabled Quartz 2D Extreme. The big amount of VRAM was good for that too.

 

[powermax]

I think the HPV cards are interchangeable between 6100/7100/8100 - I stuck my 8100 HPV card in my 6100 to verify that the 6100 was functioning, since I was selling it. Not pretty - it sticks out and you can't close the lid - but worked fine!

This is the HPV from my 8100
View attachment 77050

Sorry for being off-topic but did you have a dump of the DeclROM (U13) seating to the right of the big VLSI ASIC (DAFB video controller)? I'm working on a Power Macintosh emulator called DingusPPC that already emulates that HW. To emulate that video card, I need the driver stored in the above mentioned DeclROM...

 

[powermax]

I think the HPV cards are interchangeable between 6100/7100/8100 - I stuck my 8100 HPV card in my 6100 to verify that the 6100 was functioning, since I was selling it. Not pretty - it sticks out and you can't close the lid - but worked fine!

This is the HPV from my 8100
View attachment 77050

That HPV card has been designed for the PDS slot of a first-generation Power Macintosh computer equipped with a MPC601 CPU.
It should work in a Power Macintosh 6100, 7100 and 8100 whereas the former requires a proper right-angle adapter like this one.
Keep in mind that the PDS slot in Power Macs 7100 and 8100 is called "VDS" (video direct slot) - it conforms to the pseudoslot design guidelines. That means that any card plugged into the PDS/VDS slot appears as a Nubus card, slot $E.
The DAFB ASIC (that big VLSI chip) provides all necessary address decoding.
The other big chip fabbed by Brooktree is called RaDACal. That's the custom RAMDAC used in some machines of the second generation of the Power Macintosh.
The HPV card offers no acceleration. It's just a faster and bigger framebuffer compared with the on-board video.