Unboxing a Rare 8-Bit ISA VGA Card

Overview

After nearly three months stuck in transit (most of it sitting in Chicago customs), my rare 8-bit ISA VGA card from Bulgaria has finally arrived! This OTI-034D dual VGA/EGA card is destined for an 8088 motherboard build. Finding true 8-bit ISA VGA cards is increasingly difficult as most VGA cards used 16-bit buses. This card will allow authentic VGA output on an 8088 system, something that wasn’t common in the original era of these computers.

Key Moments

• Package arrived after leaving Bulgaria on April 25th, arriving July 6th
• Unboxing the OTI VGA/EGA dual 8-bit ISA video card
• Examining the VGA and EGA connectors on the bracket
• Discovering configurable jumpers for output selection
• Checking the OTI chipset from 1988 with 1991-dated support chips
• Planning future 8088 build video featuring this card

Full Transcript (Edited)

Hey everybody, this is a very exciting day. I finally got a package that I’ve been waiting for for a while. I ordered an ISA video card from Bulgaria on eBay a while back. This is supposed to be an 8-bit VGA card that I plan to use on an 8088 computer… sorry, on an 8088 motherboard that I also got at some point in the past.

But this took forever. If I check on here, this left Bulgaria on April 25th and today is July 6th. So it took some time for it to get here. The majority of the time it actually sat in Chicago, I believe it was, where it entered. So it’s kind of nice to finally have it.

All right, so it’s nicely packaged and I’m gonna go ahead and use my little knife here. This is supposed to be an OTI VGA/EGA dual OTI-034D 8-bit ISA video card. So I’m not familiar with… I hope it’s actually VGA.

[Opens package]

Okay, all right, so one more… let’s see. Oh nice, look at that! So nice. Let’s see what the connector looks like here. Yep, there’s VGA right there and there’s EGA, I guess. So EGA or VGA. It’s got some jumpers here. I’m assuming those can be used to configure the output right there. I’m not gonna mess with it, but I got this because I want to have an 8088 that actually has VGA output.

So I’m going to be building one in a future video and I plan to use this card as the output. So yeah, that’s kind of cool. Let’s see, it’s an OTI chipset and this is from… looks like from 1988. That’s ‘88, 16th week, I think that’s what it means. And the chips are… well, this one has 1991 on it. That one has ‘91, week 17. And the main one here has ‘91, week 14. So I guess this is from 1991. Kind of… oh yeah, ‘91, that’s what it probably means. Like ‘91, ‘88… I don’t know if in 1988 the year is ‘91, so kind of cool.

I’ll have a follow-up video when I actually use this card on the 8088 build that I plan to do. So let’s hope that it actually works. For now I’ll just put it away.

Well, if you like this kind of stuff, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel so that you don’t miss the build that I plan to use this card on. Yeah, it’s kind of a unique thing, especially with an 8-bit bus. I hope it works. Cheers!