#VistaPro
Don,
I think Opal did offer a board a while back — but Clint was too busy at the
time. His priority at the time was to get all the AGA modes working. Having
been a hardware developer myself I know that you get tons of request from
"developers, reviewers and beta testers" for free samples — you have to pick
and choose since you can't afford to send free product to everyone who asks.
And early on there's usually a shortage of boards and your cash-poor so you
need to ship to _paying_ customers.
Vistapro has a reputation as a product that can take good advantage of 24 bit
video so most manufactures have been willing to supply samples. Some of the
boards that were given to VRLI in the past include DCTV, HAME, Toaster, and
FireCracker24. Actually, NewTek supplied a toaster but wouldn't tell us how to
program it so nothing much came of that except that we changed the default
overscan image height to 482 since the Toaster didn't like 484. I believe that
there's a library now that you can use to talk to the Toaster?
Anyway, now is the time for all you manufactures (if you're reading this) to
send VRLI sample boards if you want support in VP4! Don't wait until the last
minute…
Once I started using 24 bit video (FireCracker24 at the time) I couldn't stand
looking at a regular Amiga or PC screen anymore!
A CD-ROM is seriously in the works right now. It will officially be a CD-ROM
version of VP3 for the PC, but since it's ISO-9660 compliant, you'll be able to
read the DEM files (thousands of 'em) from the Amiga too. As usual, Vistapro
owners will be eligible for a low priced upgrade to the CD-ROM when it's
available.
Thanks for your enthusiastic support over the years!
John.