Those old video card pin connectors

[theFOoL]

I'm just all so curious about what they were for. You know those pin on the rear side of the PCB on the card. I was just curious bc Google is confused lol

 

[Ruru]

What pins you exactly mean?

 

[Bill_Bright]

Yeah, you need to explain what you mean. What kind of video card? What pin connectors?

Google is not confused. You are not telling it what to look for.

 

[ir_cow]

Are you just looking at the solder joint of the power connector on the back?

 

[theFOoL]

Hmmm like (I don't the type but) Like those bottom/rear pins to Add like extra RAM or whatever just always interest me and why no one bothered to add

 

[Bill_Bright]

why no one bothered to add

How do you know this?

Do note that the exact same PCB is commonly used to make several, slightly different versions of the same model card. This version may have 1GB of installed VRAM, that version may have 2GB, and another may have 4GB. This version might have two cooling fans, that version just one.

The exact same PCB might even be used by different brands. For example, both NVIDIA and AMD make OEM cards for their various GPUs they then provide to ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, etc. for those brands to make their own versions.

But without knowing exactly what card(s) you are talking about, that is only my guess. So again, you need to be more specific if you want a specific answer.

 

[theFOoL]

I added a picture but can be a sound card or video card like this goes back to the 90s too early 2000s

 

[eidairaman1]

I added a picture but can be a sound card or video card like this goes back to the 90s too early 2000s

Are you talking about in the connector in the upper left corner of the photo?

If you look close enough you will see a designstion on the white silk screen for what a components purpose is for.

Your cursor is over the video graphics array output port

 

[Bill_Bright]

Well, first, you said "rear" side of the PCB. To me, that means the same as the "back" side - opposite of the surface where all the components populate the board.

If referring to an edge, one still has to be specific because left, right, top, bottom is not defined by any industry standard that I am aware off.

Looking at your image, I still don't know what you are referring to. The big blue connector looks like a parallel data connector. There likely is a serial connector. There could be other connectors that might be used in proprietary scenarios.

Any way, my point earlier remains the same. The same PCB most likely is used for different configurations and versions by the maker, or the brand.

 

[eidairaman1]

Well, first, you said "rear" side of the PCB. To me, that means the same as the "back" side - opposite of the surface where all the components populate the board.

If referring to an edge, one still has to be specific because left, right, top, bottom is not defined by any industry standard that I am aware off.

Looking at your image, I still don't know what you are referring to. The big blue connector looks like a parallel data connector. There likely is a serial connector. There could be other connectors that might be used in proprietary scenarios.

Any way, my point earlier remains the same. The same PCB most likely is used for different configurations and versions by the maker, or the brand.

Blue was typically used for the VGA port also the pins are in the cable side for it, rs232 serial/com the pins are on the port side and its teal/aqua here, don't get me wrong I've seen both ports be black even.

 

[theFOoL]

This is what I was talking about...

 

[eidairaman1]

This is what I was talking about...

View attachment 381625

CON3 Header

The Pi4J Project – Pin Numbering - LeMaker BananaPi

www.pi4j.com

 

[Zareek]

This is what I was talking about...

View attachment 381625

Like @Bill_Bright said, not really an industry standard, AFAIK. It could have been for adding additional memory or perhaps some sort of alternative video output interface. I've seen cards in the past using similar connectors for something like an optional DVI or even VGA port. That pin style header connecter in various pin numbers was used for a lot of different things, for a long period of time in computers. I know definitely as far back as the IBM XTs through to I'm sure even today some add-in cards or motherboards still use them for optional 9 pin serial ports. It was a popular way to connect a lot of things for a long time. It's not used as much these days but back in the day we used them for a TON of things.

Seeing those headers brings me back to my teens. Does anyone else remember setting dip switches and jumpers and screwing with IRQ and DMA assignments?

 

[theFOoL]

Yeah thanks. I do remember in early 2000s we'd see those but no matter bothered using them. I'm guessing at the Time you had to Call in for such things to add

 

[eidairaman1]

Like @Bill_Bright said, not really an industry standard, AFAIK. It could have been for adding additional memory or perhaps some sort of alternative video output interface. I've seen cards in the past using similar connectors for something like an optional DVI or even VGA port. That pin style header connecter in various pin numbers was used for a lot of different things, for a long period of time in computers. I know definitely as far back as the IBM XTs through to I'm sure even today some add-in cards or motherboards still use them for optional 9 pin serial ports. It was a popular way to connect a lot of things for a long time. It's not used as much these days but back in the day we used them for a TON of things.

Seeing those headers brings me back to my teens. Does anyone else remember setting dip switches and jumpers and screwing with IRQ and DMA assignments?

I believe the port was for additional encoder/decoder cards back then, there was an old vesa style connection during the isa days for adding cards.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Blue was typically used for the VGA port

I agree but without a reference for size, that blue connector in the OP's image looks much larger than a standard VGA port.

Also, while blue was pretty common for VGA, it was not exclusive to or limited to only VGA.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

This is what I was talking about...

View attachment 381625

Looks like a com port for debugging.

 

[eidairaman1]

I agree but without a reference for size, that blue connector in the OP's image looks much larger than a standard VGA port.

Also, while blue was pretty common for VGA, it was not exclusive to or limited to only VGA.

Oy veh, I mentioned that earlier,

 

[Bill_Bright]

Oy veh, I mentioned that earlier,

Apologies. Didn't realize you were the only one allowed to make such observations.

 

[Zareek]

I believe the port was for additional encoder/decoder cards back then, there was an old vesa style connection during the isa days for adding cards.

That makes a lot of sense. I do remember a lot of add-in cards and daughter boards in the early MPEG and MPEG-2 days. And the TV encoder add-ons that allowed you to add RCA and/or S-Video connectors.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Way back in the day we had a tape backup that used a PCI interface card that looked similar to that card too, connected to a 5 1/4 tape drive via parallel port on the card. It wasn't pretty, definitely not quick, but it worked.

 

[Dr. Dro]

This is what I was talking about...

View attachment 381625

These are usually for daughtercards. Ancient pre-3D accelerators did not have any form of MPEG video acceleration, so they required a daughtercard with an ASIC to play DVD video etc. - either that, or you had a software decoder such as Nvidia's PureVideo decoder, which was used until around the mid 2000s. But the software road wasn't feasible with the 200-300 MHz CPUs of the time, software decoding was realistically around late Pentium III early Pentium 4 era. Some of these GPUs also used this same connector for a video memory expansion daughtercard.

The ATI Mach64 series had slots for both, I believe this one has the video memory expansion installed. but it's been a long time since I've seen any of this crusty museum stuff.

 

[Wirko]

I googled "8260B/V6". It's graphics card with a Cirrus Logic GD5446 chip. Apart from video decoding, the daughtercard/board might also be a video capture card.

V-Port™, GPIO, I2C bus interfaces for video decoders

• Video capture and closed-caption capture applications
• Automatic double buffering to prevent video tearing
• Interface to MPEG and other video decoders

Hm, the chip's datasheet is on the same site too. Another option is "TV decoder", which might be a decoder for encrypted TV channels. Or...

The CL-GD5446 provides a glueless connection to most of the popular video decoder devices from Cirrus Logic as well as other vendors. This provides broad flexibility to support live TV-in-a-window, closed captioning, hardware MPEG, and video conferencing, extending baseline system functions with enhanced features to meet the requirements of a wide range of applications.

So this was a quite primitive graphics chip, which couldn't even perform "advanced" 2D tasks all by itself.

 

[theFOoL]

Thank you. I just found these interesting but I was only 9 lol

 

[Wirko]

Thank you. I just found these interesting but I was only 9 lol

Doesn't matter much, interest for retrorific stuff of any age is commendable at any age.