Paradise / Western Digital
Paradise Systems was a graphics chipset manufacturer for the IBM PC and its compatibles. It was formed by Paul Jain in 1982 who went on to form Video Seven a few years later. Toshiba used a Paradise VGA chipset in its 1989/1990 range of laptops, including the T3100SX, T3200SX, T5100/100, T5100/200, as did NEC in its PowerMate laptop range and Compaq in its Portable 386.
Paradise were bought out by Western Digital in 1986 and rebranded Western Digital Imaging. This part of the company was then sold in 1991 to Philips (see press release).
Here is a list of their cards in chronological order by bus type:
| ISA Cards | VLB, AGP and PCI Cards |
|---|---|
| Modular Graphics Card (MGC) (1984) PVC4 (1985) Color/Mono Card (1986) AutoSwitch EGA (1986) PEGA 1A / AutoSwitch EGA 350 (1986) PEGA 2A / AutoSwitch EGA 480 (1987) PVGA Plus / WD90C90 (1987) PVGA 1A (1988) Basic (1989?) WD90C00 (PVGA 1B) (1989) WD90C10 (PVGA 1M) (1989) WD90C11 (PVGA 1C) (1989) WD90C12 (1990) WD90C22 (1991) WD90C30 (PVGA 1D) (1990) VGA 1024 (1991) WD90C31 (1992) |
WD90C33-ZZ (1993) WD90C24 (1994) Pipeline-PCI 8 / Pipeline 64 (1995) Bali 32 / Bali 64 (1994) Bahamas 64 (1994) Barbados 64 (1994) Tasmania 3D (1995) |
During the late 90s, Paradise/WD was a commonly-known brand for their PVGA series of SVGA graphics chipsets. The table below summarises most of the PVGA range, which were later rebranded as Western Digital part numbers, WD90Cxx:
| PVGA1A - |
PVGA1B WD90C00 |
PVGA1M WD90C10 |
PVGA1C WD90C11 |
PVGA1D WD90C30 |
- WD90C31 |
- WD90C33-ZZ |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introduced | 1988 | 1989 | 1989 | 1989 | 1990 | 1992 | 1993 |
| Bus | ISA | ISA | ISA | ISA | ISA | ISA | ISA and VLB |
| Max. Memory | 1 MB | 1 MB | 256 KB | 512 KB | 1 MB | 1 MB | 2 MB |
| Max. Resolution | 800 x 600 (16) 640 x 480 (256) |
1024 x 768 (16) 800 x 600 (256) |
1024 x 768 (2/4) 800 x 600 (16) |
1024 x 768 (16) 800 x 600 (256) |
1024 x 768 (256) 640 x 480 (64K) | 1024 x 768 (256) 640 x 480 (64K) |
1280 x 1024i (256) 800 x 600 (64K) 640 x 480 (16M) |
| RAMDAC | Inmos G176P Brooktree Bt471KP Avasem V3676 |
Analog ADV476 Brooktree Bt471KP Brooktree Bt476KP |
? | Music TR9C1710 Samsung KDA0476 |
Winbond W82C476 Samsung KDA0476 ADV476 |
Sierra SC15025 AT&T ATT20C492 |
Sierra SC15025 AT&T ATT20C492 |
| Memory Bus | 8 or 16-bit | 8 or 16-bit | 8 or 16-bit | 8 or 16-bit | 16 or 32-bit | 16 or 32-bit | 16 or 32-bit |
| Dot Clock | 42 - 45 MHz | 45 MHz | 65 MHz | 65 MHz | 80 MHz | 80 MHz | 80 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 36 - 42 MHz | 56 MHz | 42 MHz | 42 - 45 MHz | 50 MHz | 50 MHz | 60 MHz |
| VESA Support | None | None | None | None | v1.01 | v1.02? | v2.0? |
| Hardware Acceleration | None | None | None | None | None | BitBlt, h/w cursor, raster ops, transparency, filled rectangles | BitBlt, h/w cursor, raster ops, transparency, filled rectangles |