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 and 16.8 million color 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. Like 3dfx, Number Nine often had interesting retail box art.
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Number Nine was founded in 1982 by Andrew Najda and Stan Bialek as Number Nine Computer Corporation in Lexington, Massachusetts. The company was renamed Number Nine Visual Technology Corporation in the early 1990s. 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. In the mid to late 1990s, Number Nine lost market share due to price and performance competition from other video card makers, particularly Matrox, 3dfx, Diamond, and ATI. Number Nine had been slow to respond to the boom in 3D graphics, and had continued to emphasize high quality, fast 2D graphics. On December 20, 1999, Number Nine filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and 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, Number Nine had ceased operations entirely and S3 had completed acquisition of Number Nine's assets. 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 URL name was taken over by an on-line gambling company.
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.
On their early ISA cards (1980s, pre-Imagine), Number Nine used Texas Instruments TMS-340x0 co-processors 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.
The Imagine series GPUs (also called graphics accelerators) were Number Nine's own in-house designs. The Imagine series went through four generations:
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.[6]
The Imagine 128-II added Gouraud shading, 32-bit Z-buffering, double display buffering, and a 256-bit video rendering engine.[7]
The Ticket to Ride (Imagine-3) supported WRAM and both the AGP and PCI busses, 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.[8]
The Ticket to Ride IV included an integrated 250 MHz RAMDAC, support for up to 32 MB SDRAM, full scene anti-aliasing, per pixel fog, specular, and alpha effects, 10-level detail per pixel MIP mapping, bilnear 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.[9][10]
These 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 two standard video adapters with the OpenLDI interface for SGI's 1600SW digital flat panel monitor; the other was the 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1-1600SW. (SGI's 1600SW video adapters were proprietary 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's last two graphics cards were the only ones to require heatsinks on the GPU. Both outperformed the Revolution IV.
Number Nine had a close business relationship with S3 throughout the 1990s. While the Imagine series GPUs and cards were Number Nine's flagship product, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GXE | 928 | 1M, 2M, 4M VRAM | ISA, VLB, PCI |
| GXE 64 | 864 | 1M, 2M DRAM | ISA?, VLB, PCI |
| GXE 64 Pro | 964 | 2M, 4M VRAM | ISA?, VLB, PCI |
| GXE 64/S3 Trio | 764 (Trio) | 1M, 2M DRAM | ISA?, VLB, PCI |
| Vision 330 | 764 (Trio) | 1M, 2M DRAM | VLB, PCI |
| Motion 331 | 765 (Trio V+) | 1M, 2M DRAM | VLB, PCI |
| Motion 531 | 868 | 1M, 2M DRAM | VLB, PCI |
| Motion 771 | 968 | 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 | Savage4 (small heatsink on GPU) | 8M (some OEM), 16M, 32M SDRAM | PCI, AGP |
With the exception of the GXi Lite, all of these 1980s to early 1990s era graphics cards were large, full length cards.
The TIGA-based cards were made from about 1986 to 1992. These cards were very expensive in their day, ranging in price from $1000 to $2500 at introduction. Cards using a Texas Instruments TMS-340xx TIGA co-processor (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 | 1.5M, 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 |
Ye truly olde cards (no co-processor, pre-1986, pre-VGA standard):
| #9 Model | Display Resolution | Color Palette[12] | 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 µPD7220 |
| Revolution 512x32 | 512×480 | 245,760 colors selectable from a palette of 16.7 million | ISA | uses NEC µPD7220 |
| Revolution 1024x8 | 1024×768 from 1024×1024 | 256 colors selectable from a palette of 16.7 million | ISA | |
| Revolution 2048x4 | 1280×960 from 2048×1024 | 16 colors selectable from a palette of 4096 | ISA |
The Revolution series ranged in price from $1995 to $2995 at introduction.
List of defunct graphics chips and card companies