#SNAPplus
10 messages in this thread
Ron,
I am the happy owner of a copy of MM Madness. I read your review on the
Cardinal SNAPplus and noticed you didn't mention having any problems involving
the 32k driver. I receive a GPF when I try to work with any aspect of
Multimedia when my drivers are set on the 32k driver. I have read messages
from owners of other boards who use the TSENG 4000 drivers and they report the
same problem. So to cure the problem I have to switch drivers depending on
what I want to work with. I was hoping you could point me in the direction of
the solution.
By the way the book is great. I reccomend it to everone I know with a CD-ROM.
Hope to see more both in print and in Nautilus, since that is where I heard of
your Multimedia Madness.
Kb
I have a variety of video cards around, and I am finding that the 32k color
drivers are the biggest problem right now. I'm not sure why this is; I'd hate
to think it's because they are being ignored by the multimedia hardware
vendors. I have few problems with 8-bit color, minor problems with 24-bit
color, and extensive problems with almost any 16-bit color driver.
Sorry to not have more positive news about this. I've pretty much given up
trying to use 16-bit color, which is sad because it does such a nice job with
AVI files. Sigh. Things like this will probably settle down over the next
year, but that doesn't do much for curent owners.
Ron
Thanks for the quick reply Ron. I guess when you are on the cutting edge of
technology you have to expect a few nicks. Lets hope that they correct this
problem sometime in the near future. But until then I guess I will have to
plod along.
Kb
Ironically, the finest 16 bit color I know is still TIGA, originally
developed for high-end AutoCAD and animation. I have no trouble scanning,
manipulating, etc. true color with my TIGA board. However, it's not at its best
with AVI because TI has never optimized the driver for AVI. It is rumored that
it's in the works, but…. It plays them okay, but with about 5% frames
skipped.
A great deal of software, however, is very much against anything higher
than 256 and even at resolutions much above 640X480, with Nautilus being a good
example. This is because Toolbook's still quite limited to 640X480 and it's
used by a ton of applications. With the #2 system here, which is an AST 486/33
with a 1 meg Paradise board in it, we've found that the best resolution on the
monitor is at 800X600, but Nautilus and most other Toolbook apps give a GPF
when play is attempted at that resolution. They will play full screen in
640X480/256 or in partial screen at 1024X768 or 1248X1024, but not at the
medium rez at all. And they won't expand to fill more than the 640X480 pixels
no matter what the rez. Until not only applications but development tools for
those apps become resolution independent (or at least switchable), we'll
continue to have these problems.
At least some of the problems you describe seem likely to be video driver
issues, though. I gave up using TIGA because of driver problems, and I was
using the TIGA drivers supplies with WIN 3.1! I had two TIGA boards — one
from NEC, and one from Hercules. Both now gather dust. They were just two
non-standard for my needs, which include development. I found that most
Windows development environments were ignoring TIGA. I guess it's considered a
"special purpose" area. <g>
You are correct that there is a lot of software that is hostile to >256 colors.
As for resolutions >640×480, I have no problems running TB or Nautilus at
800×600 or 1024×768. (I haven't, however, tried to create larger pages.)
Maybe it's your TIGA drivers <G&D>.
There's a new version of TB in the works; I'll have to check to see how they're
handling higher resolutions and color depths.
Ron
Well, the AST machine here with the 1 meg Paradise board generates a GPF if
Nautilus or any other Toolbook app is attempted at 800X600 (no problem with
other software) but it runs fine at 640X480 or, in its 2/3rds of the screen
mode, at 1024X768!
There is no reason why TIGA shouldn't run AVI files if TI got interested in
it (and there is word that it now is). TIGA has always been a professional
format, though; for 24 bit graphics work there's simply no equal, and using
things like Fractal's Painter or Sketcher (b&w) or CorelDraw things just FLY.
However, the Windows generic TIGA is now two generations of TIGA out of date
and is somewhat limited. As with all the other formats (ATI, S3, Tseng, etc.)
the best drivers are the ones optimized by the board maker.
One of the reasons I took out the TIGA cards was that I had other boards that
performed better; I'm sure it was because the vendors of the TIGA boards hadn't
gotten around to updating their drivers. One was the NEC Multisync Graphics
Engine (which is also discontinued, a factor in my decision!), and the other
was the Hercules Graphics Station card, both with 1 meg memory (also a factor;
no 24-bit support with that amount of memory!).
I have an ATI Ultra Pro; with their latest drivers, it flys so fast it scares
me! Ihave an AVI file with 640×480 bitmaps in it (plays at .25 frames per
second in the final version, since it is a series of different bitmaps, not a
movie). By mistake, I did a version that runs at 15 fps; all 15 frames are
played (none skipped) with the special ATI Video for Windows support in their
latest driver version.
Ron
Well, I understand ATI had a lot of frantic scrambling and just recently got
their drivers augmented correctly.
I, too, had a NEC MGE but rarely ran it in TIGA except for curiosity's sake
since DGIS was giving as good results and took up only a quarter of the memory
TIGA did. You are correct, though, that TIGA really needs more than a megabyte;
I have one meg of VRAM and 3 megs of DRAM on the Level 25 and it really flies
as well, even in 24 bit color mode. I'm told the Level 29 really knocks
people's socks off with its nearly 12 megs aboard and its 40Mhz TI coprocessor
but I'm not sure it's worth the upgrade for me. On the other hand, the 29's
ability to literally virtualize TWO 1024X1268 Windows desktops side by side,
both active, and pannable with the mouse, is very tempting. Talk about parallel
processing!
Wow! Now, if we could just get stuff like that for $500… <g>
Ron
Ron, Laserdisc players that are quite good can be had for UNDER $500; the
absolute top of the line is only about $1100. Although nothing is quite as
cheap as a VCR on the low end, I've seen a number of fine players in the $400
arena. The extra money is primarily for features–like playing both sides of a
disk without having to turn it over, being able to do digital freeze frames
even on disk formats that don't allow it, etc.