visual technology industry computer hardware founded 1982 founder andrew najda and stan bialek products graphics cards website www.nine.com offline in the web archive number nine visual technology corporation was a manufacturer of video graphics chips and cards from 1982 to 1999 . number nine developed the first 128 bit graphics processor the imagine 128 as well as the first 256 color 8 bit and 16.8 million color 24 bit cards . 1 the name of the company as well as many of its products e.g. revolution imagine pepper ticket to ride refer to beatles songs . at system boot up number nine cards video bios splash screens display short phrases from beatles songs related to the cards model names . card model names were usually preceded by a 9 moniker . contents 1 history 2 products 2.1 early pre vga video cards 2.2 tiga cards 2.3 number nine video cards using number nine gpus 2.4 number nine video cards using s3 graphics processors 2.5 number nine video cards with heatsinks 2.6 pixelfusion joint venture 3 see also 4 references 5 external links history edit number nine was founded in 1982 by andrew najda and stan bialek as number nine computer corporation . the company was renamed number nine visual technology corporation in the early 1990s . for most of its existence number nine was based in lexington massachusetts . number nine initially made an apple ii accelerator board then later moved into the design and manufacture of high end pc graphics cards in 1983 . number nine was one of the premier higher end graphics card companies into the early 1990s . in the mid to late 1990s number nine began to lose market share to competitors in both the price and performance arenas . number nine was slow to respond to the boom in 3d graphics continuing to emphasize high quality fast 2d graphics . citation needed on december 20 1999 number nine announced a letter of intent for s3 inc. later s3 graphics co. to buy substantially all assets and intellectual property of number nine . by mid 2000 s3 had completed the acquisition of number nine s assets and number nine had ceased operations . in 2002 two former number nine engineers james macleod and francis bruno formed silicon spectrum inc. and licensed number nine s graphics technology from s3 to implement in fpga devices . 2 3 4 5 for five years after number nine closed its doors a former employee kept number nine s website up and running with driver downloads and a forum available for self help . a volunteer and 9 enthusiast provided regular impromptu technical support on the forum for the last two and a half years the site was active . several former employees checked in to help occasionally . the website finally went off the air for good in march 2005 and the domain name was taken over by an online gambling company . in 2013 francis bruno from silicon spectrum tried to fund a open source gpu based on a 9 ticket to ride iv derived design . started on the crowdfunding platform kickstarter.com the campaign was unsuccessful as only 13 000 of the requested 200 000 was gathered . 6 7 despite this source code was released under a gpl3 license in august 2014 . 8 products edit the first number nine graphics cards were isa bus pre vga standard cards that had no graphics accelerator chips . in the latter 1980s to early 1990s number nine made isa and mca bus graphics cards based on texas instruments tiga coprocessors . beginning in the 1990s number nine made agp and pci graphics cards with their own proprietary graphics accelerators the imagine line gpus . contemporaneously number nine made agp pci vlb and isa graphics cards using s3 graphics accelerator chips . their very last agp card used an nvidia gpu . early pre vga video cards edit early cards no co processor pre 1986 pre vga standard 9 model display resolution color palette 9 pc bus notes number nine graphics system cga cga isa revolution 512x8 512 480 256 colors selectable from a palette of 16.7 million isa uses nec pd7220 revolution 512x32 512 480 245 760 colors selectable from a palette of 16.7 million isa uses nec pd7220 revolution 1024x8 1024 768 from 1024 1024 256 colors selectable from a palette of 16.7 million isa revolution 2048x4 10 1280 960 from 2048 1024 16 colors selectable from a palette of 4096 isa hitachi hd63484 advanced crt controller the revolution series were large full length cards that ranged in price from 1995 to 2995 at introduction . tiga cards edit number nine graphics cards using texas instruments tiga co processors were made from about 1986 to 1992 . the texas instruments tms 340x0 co processors were coupled with custom number nine designed application specific chips which could only handle very primitive graphics functions such as clipping . nevertheless this was a major accomplishment back in the day . with the exception of the gxi lite all of the tiga graphics cards were large full length cards . cards using a tiga co processor were in approximate order of introduction 9 model tiga co processor memory pc bus architecture pepper tms 34010 isa pepper sgt tms 34010 intel 82786 1m 4m isa pepper pro 1024 11 tms 34010 1.5 m 2m mca isa pepper pro 1280 tms 34010 mca isa pepper pro 1600 tms 34010 mca isa gx tms 34010 1m dram 2m vram mca isa gxi lite tms 34020 1m dram 1m vram mca isa gxi tms 34020 1m dram 2m vram mca isa gxitc tms 34020 1m dram 4m vram mca isa the tiga based cards were very expensive in their day ranging in price from 995 to 2495 at introduction . number nine video cards using number nine gpus edit imagine 128 early original version note old company name imagine 128 series ii revolution 3d ticket to ride pci bus revolution iv ticket to ride 4 pci bus the imagine series gpus also called graphics accelerators were number nine s own in house designs . the imagine series went through four generations imagine 128 imagine imagine 128 ii imagine2 t2r marked ticket to ride ; sometimes marked imagine 3 t2r4 marked ticket to ride iv . the imagine 128 gpu introduced a full 128 bit graphics processor gpu internal processor bus and memory bus were all 128 bits . however there was no or very little hardware support for 3d graphics operations . 12 the imagine 128 ii added gouraud shading 32 bit z buffering double display buffering and a 256 bit video rendering engine . 13 the ticket to ride imagine 3 supported wram and both the agp and pci buses had a 3d floating point setup engine bilinear filtering and perspective correction gouraud shading alpha blending interpolated fogging specular lighting double and triple display buffering 16 24 and 32 bit z buffering mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 and hardware mip mapping . 14 the ticket to ride iv included an integrated 250 mhz ramdac support for up to 32 mib sdram full scene anti aliasing per pixel fog specular and alpha effects 10 level detail per pixel mip mapping bilinear and trilinear filtering 8 bits per texel 8 kb on chip texture cache hardware mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 and a full ieee 754 floating point pipeline 3d rendering setup engine . 15 16 number nine graphics accelerators were used on the following number nine model video cards 9 model 9 gpu memory pc bus architecture imagine 128 imagine 128 4m 8m vram pci imagine 128 series 2 imagine 128 ii 4m 8m h vram pci imagine 128 series 2e imagine 128 ii 4m edo dram pci revolution 3d t2r 4m or 8m base 12m 16m wram pci agp revolution iv t2r4 16m 32m sdram pci agp revolution iv fp t2r4 32m sdram pci agp these 1990s video cards were number nine s flagship cards of their day the imagine 128 and 128 series 2 were very expensive . none required a heatsink on the gpu . the original imagine 128 was introduced in 1994 . the revolution iv was introduced in 1998 . in addition to a standard analog vga connector the revolution iv fp also called the revolution iv 1600sw had an openldi digital interface connector for the silicon graphics inc sgi 1600sw digital flat panel monitor . the revolution iv fp was one of only a few standard video adapters with the openldi interface for sgi s 1600sw digital flat panel monitor some others were 3dlabs oxygen vx1 1600sw i o data ga nf30 pci and siemens nixdorf s26361 d964 cards in some siemens nixdorf computer . sgi s 1600sw video adapters were proprietary on board to their o2 320 and 540 graphics workstations . formac made a limited number of pci cards with openldi for apple macs . the openldi interface is neither physically nor electrically compatible with the modern dvi d interface . this was the early days of digital video connections and there were several competing incompatible standards . openldi for stand alone displays disappeared but several aftermarket manufacturers made adapters to convert openldi to dvi d so more modern video cards would work with the 1600sw monitor . the 1600sw monitor was far ahead of its time and was eagerly sought long after it was out of production . for this reason for a time revolution iv fp and oxygen vx1 1600sw video cards commanded a premium price in the used market long after they were out of production . number nine video cards using s3 graphics processors edit number nine had a close business relationship with s3 graphics throughout the 1990s . while the imagine series gpus and cards were number nine s flagship products contemporaneously number nine produced a series of less expensive video graphics cards using s3 s gpus . the s3 based cards were usually introduced in groups of three at three price points below the imagine cards . they carried the same model name but different model numbers and gpus . except for the sr9 number nine s last best s3 card none of these video cards had heatsinks on the graphics processing chip gpu . the s3 based video cards were in approximate order of introduction 9 model s3 gpu memory pc bus architecture notes gxe 928 1m 2m 4m vram isa vlb pci gxe 64 864 vision864 1m 2m dram isa vlb pci gxe 64 pro 964 vision964 2m 4m vram isa vlb pci gxe 64 trio 764 trio64 1m 2m dram isa vlb pci vision 330 764 trio64 1m 2m dram vlb pci motion 331 765 trio64v 1m 2m dram vlb pci motion 531 868 vision868 1m 2m dram vlb pci motion 771 968 vision968 2m 4m vram vlb pci reality 332 325 virge 2m edo dram pci reality 772 988 virge vx 2m 4m vram pci reality 334 357 virge gx2 4m sgram pci agp sr9 sdram 394 savage4 lt small heatsink on gpu 8m sdram agp some oem sr9 sdram 397 savage4 pro small heatsink on gpu 16m 32m sdram agp retail 17 sr9 sgram 398 savage4 xtreme small heatsink on gpu 8m 16m sgram agp oem only number nine video cards with heatsinks edit sr9 sdram nlx 8mb heatsink removed with s3 savage4 lt chip sr9 sgram 16mb dvi heatsink removed with s3 savage4 xtreme chip number nine s last two graphics cards were the only ones to require heatsinks on the gpu . both outperformed the revolution iv . the sr9 was number nine s last retail card . it used an s3 savage4 gpu with a small heatsink on the gpu the sdram one with vga connector is savage4 lt the sgram one with dvi connector is savage4 xtreme . an oem only agp card using an nvidia tnt2 m64 gpu and 16m or