CompuServe Messages

Dennis, I don't think the MGA boards are meant to be competition for the targa+/vista board series – that would be the Matrox Illuminator Pro series. They are more like extra hot Acad/Windows display cards. You see you need a framebuffer _in addition_ to your main display board to accomplish frame-by-frame output. A frame buffer is simply a memory location on a card (or in an external box) which can store a frame, while you are doing other things with your main interface. That frame will stay in the framebuffer until you replace it with another, allowing you to record it, edit it, or whatever you like. >> There is an option for an output to tape directly from the card. This is probably a real-time, vga-to-ntsc type converter, as apposed to a true framebuffer. Although, with some slick programming I wouldn't doubt that it would be possibly to split the memory on the card and allocate, say 2mb for display and 1mb-2mb for framebuffering. The targa+64 is programmable to do something like that, where it has the function of 2 32-bit framebuffers on board (each with 1mb of memory). FWIW.