ATI All-in-Wonder PRO (1997)

I was a big fan of All-in-Wonder cards back in the late-90s. ‘Multimedia’ was a big thing back then and ATI responded with the concept of a single card combining 2D/3D/video acceleration, TV-in/out and a TV tuner. This card allowed me to record and encode full PAL resolution in real time on a standard 266-MHz Pentium II PC. This one was based on the ATI Rage Pro chipset so it was not very good for 3D games. In following years, I had also All-in-Wonder cards based on Rage 128 Pro, Radeon and Radeon 8500DV. The last of them added also two Firewire 400 ports and a remote control. I loved it.

There is no demand for such things today. Almost nobody cares about the built-in TV input capability in PCs. In 2010, it was possible to buy a multimedia laptop with an integrated TV tuner and remote control. There were plenty of them (especially with 17.3 and 18.4-inch screens), but there is none today.

1 thought on “ATI All-in-Wonder PRO (1997)”

  1. Nice memory! I had this exact card with a separate voodoo 2 card, and same 266 cpu that you mention above. Our particular voodoo 2 card had a vga I and out. So one would jump the ATI card out to the input of the voodoo, then back out to the monitor. Depending on the application, the voodoo card would make an audible click when the relay switched over to one card or the other. It was pretty darn slick for the day.

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