DOS Days

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