Mpact STB Systems?

[Kasper4christ]

like it says, I found this PCI card laying around my room, and im wondering what it does...
or what its for..
like i said, its a PCI card, no external hookups or anything, its all internal.
the main chip on it says "
!
____
MPACT
Lg Semicon
gm90c711qvx
9810

there are two ports on it, labeled audio in, and audio out, a CD Audio cable fits into it perfectly, in either plug...

there are 4 rows of plugs.. (pins)
P1 is 40 pins, IDE config.. labeld AMC
P2 is 26 pins, Labeled VMI
P3 is 34 pins, labeled LPB
J3 is just solderpoints for 36 pins, but no physical pins are there, labeled DVMB

looks made by STB Systems Inc. in 1997, Revision A



anyone out there have a clue to what this thing is?

 

[SRGilbert]

I remember that STB made my very first Nvidia TnT video card, 16megs on that baby!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Kasper4christ
MPACT
looks made by STB Systems Inc. in 1997, Revision A
anyone out there have a clue to what this thing is?

Yeah, I still have one somewhere I think, unused, even. It's an mPACT "integrated multimedia decoder", aka. DVD-decoder board. The connectors on it are to connect to the various standards for sharing digital video-input data with video cards of the day. AMC is ATI Multimedia Channel, the others are some various forms of VESA-spec video input channels. That card basically functioned as a daughterboard, and fed the decoded video data to the video card to be mixed into the frame-buffer and displayed.

I was told, by someone in the know about these cards, that they were capable of higher-quality DVD-decoding support than most other cards of their day, because they could be run at 72Hz, in sync with your video card, with a 24-bit color progressive-scan picture. Most other decoders only ran in 16-bit color (like my old ATI RagePro AGP), and running at 72Hz provided a nice syncronous frame-rate with respect to content that was encoded from 24FPS film source.