#24x .FLC
25 messages in this thread
Any reason why you BOUGHT drivers from Panacea? The card should have
shipped with a driver (or it is available now from Diamond) that supports
3D Studio.
-Chris
Panaces
Chris,
Let me answer your question in a coupla different ways. Here's why I
bought the drivers from Panacea… First, they're not giving them away!!
Uh… not the answer you were looking for. O.K. Consider this scenario.
The SS24x box has a bright sticker on it saying that it comes with Panacea
drivers. The SS24x manual describes support for 3D Studio. I spend hours
trying to get it to work – never does. Read msg threads all over the place
which say get the updated Panacea or Vibrant drivers. So…I get the
latest Panacea drivers I can lay my hands on… only to find out after
several more wasted hours that it still doesn't work. Call Panacea tech
support and nice guy on the line admits that Diamond drivers don't work,
and the drivers I just bought won't either. Same guy says Diamond drivers
are a variant of the new DLD-Turbo drivers that are coming out within 3
weeks and will support 3D Studio.
So…Chris…did I answer your question? Here's one for you… Why did
Panacea sell me the drivers? Panacea and Diamond are spending a lot of
time pointing fingers at each other. While 24x/3DStudio users are wasting
time, the two companies are trying to figure out how to escape an
embarrasing situation. I think Diamond had no business making such a big
deal about shipping Panacea drivers that don't work with 3D Studio – and
Panacea should have done a better job of making sure they didn't release
drivers without fully checking out the board.
Eli.
Eli,
I'm not exactly sure why Panacea sold you a driver. Obviously there was
some mis-communication between you and the salesperson. First of all, if
the driver that came with your SS24X said that it supported 3D Studio in
the particular mode that you were wanting to use, and it didn't, then that
is Diamond's problem, not Panacea's. Granted, they are shipping a BETA
product with their board, but if they aren't going to inform users of that
fact, then they are the ones you should be taking out your frustrations on.
Diamond goes through all kinds of internal testing after receiving a driver
from us, so they should know what is supported and what isn't. It is too
bad that they have to ship a BETA product, but this isn't a Utopia. There
are problems you incur during development which puts a product past its
expected ship date. How often do you see a software product ship when it
is supposed to? Not often. The good thing is that Diamond has chosen the
world's leading provider of display list drivers, so when TurboDLD does
finally ship, you will own the FASTEST and EASIEST to use driver on the
market. It will support EVERY MODE of the SS24X in both display and render
modes. So, what this comes down to is if we [PANACEA] sold you a driver in
error, call us and get your money back. Just explain the situation, the
salespeople are very friendly and will make you happy. Then call Diamond
and see if you can get the latest BETA for the SS24X, which DOES support
all modes.
-Chris
Panacea
Chris,
I'd expect you to say nothing less than Panacea is 'the world's leading
provider of display list drivers…' And, I'm sure if the Diamond rep was
participating in this thread, the same back-patting remarks would come
spewing forth from his keyboard. Everybody's a good guy, right?!
The point is Diamond didn't happen to mention that the drivers were beta,
or that registered owners could soon expect a working replacement. I'm not
even certain there _is_ and upgrade path to the Turbo-DLD drivers for users
who just purchased the board, though I think there should be. After all,
aren't Diamond and Panacea deriving benefit from all of us who are
apparently beta testers? You get to hear firsthand feedback of how well
the product is performing.
And please, give the ole market pressures whine a rest, o.k. Who cares how
difficult it is to bring products to market, and to time their arrival with
working software, and release dates, and ship dates, and slipping dates and
on and on. If you and Diamond can't somehow get it together, find a better
alliance. As far as I can tell, there are a lot of companies which are
releasing quality products that at least work.
Eli.
Eli,
>The point is Diamond didn't happen to mention that the drivers were
>beta,
The drivers Diamond ships are not BETA. All Panacea drivers Diamond has
shipped and ship today are released by Panacea.
If you'd like an update to your disk, send me an Email message requesting
that and we'll send it out to you.
-Jeff
Jeff,
I was about ready to pick up the phone and buy one of your cards, when I
started reading this thread the end of last week. I'm getting out from
underneath my Truevision VGA "flicker, flicker, flicker." My Targa works
fine for going out NTSC, no need for the dual functionality.
I've got a couple of questions on your Diamond 24 bit Stealth.
1. Does your board come with 24 bit Windows drivers? My main
reason for buying this board would be operating my HP Scanjet in 24 bit
mode.
2. Does this board work with Vibrant's ADI drivers (version 2.1)?
I have no interest in Panacea drivers. For 2 weeks I called and was told
by an answering service that 3DStudio r. 1 drivers worked just fine with
r.2.
3. How wide a range of memory must be excuded to operate your card
in 24 bit mode?
4. Is the software shipped with your board "Beta product" as
described by Chris Edgington @ Panacea in message 24630?
Honestly, Jeff, I'm not just trying to rattle your cage here. Will this
thing work or am I buying into 3 weeks of screwing around and total loss of
productivity?
Roger D.
Not so. I have nothing to do with Diamond. I just happen to have a couple
of boards from them (and from just about everybody else).
The one thing I can tell you is that these boards deliver way more power
than the money you paid for them. Well, yeah, all those nightmares with
drivers that don't work with everything the first time around, but they
fixed all the stuff fot the Stealth Vram. And no other manufacture is
"free" of such problems. It's just a crazy market with no standards and
"needs" changing every 15 minutes…
Thanks, Gus.
Thanks for your questions Roger.
First, there is no such thing as a 24-bit Stealth. The two 24-bit cards
Diamond currently offers are the SpeedSTAR 24 based on the Tseng ET-4000/AX
controller and the SpeedStar 24X based on the WD90C31 graphics accelerator
controller.
[1]. Both cards include 24-bit Windows 3.x drivers.
[2]. Vibrant offers support for the SpeedSTAR 24, SpeedStar 24X, and
the Stealth VRAM. v2.1 evidentally does not support the
SpeedSTAR 24 by name, but selecting Tseng is supposed to engage
24-bit support. Drivers after 2.1 are supposed to include this
product by name with the 24-bit mode enabled.
[3]. The 640×480-24bit mode uses the standard 1mb of DRAM found on
either the SpeedSTAR 24 or the 24X. Video memory occupies the
standard A000-AFFF and B800-BFFF found on all VGA compatible
video cards.
[4]. Diamond does not ship BETA drivers. The drivers currently
offered on all Diamond products include released versions of
Panacea drivers.
If there are any more questions I can answer, please let me know.
-Jeff
Jeff,
Perhaps you can clear something up for me. Which of your products would I
be best off using in Windows to get 24 bit in 800 x 600?
Roger D.
Roger,
I may be wrong but none of the companies have come up with a low end card
that will do 24-bit at that rez. ATI XL24 does pseudo-24bit at that rez
(probably dithered 64k colour, my guess) and the Diamond 24x and Genoa 7900
do 64k or 32k colours at that rez.
Martin
>Perhaps you can clear something up for me. Which of your products >would
I be best off using in Windows to get 24 bit in 800 x 600?
Since all of our current products use 1mb of video memory, none of them
offer 800x600x24-bit. The higher supported 800×600 color depth we
currently offer is 32k colors. The highest 24-bit mode we offer is at
640×480 resolution.
-Jeff
Roger,
Truevision has updated their VideoVGA offering to include Hi-Color
and an optional flicker filter module. There will be upgrades available
for existing VideoVGA users. Thus, you might want to pass the card on to
someone who can best utilize it. Output with the flicker filter is
possibly going to be better than the Targa+, although no ability to sync
for broadcast.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Kevin,
I just chased down pricing on that "upgrade." They should be saying
minimal trade-in, not upgrade. My one mg board + $500 + $200 optional
flicker filter, just the cash is as much as I paid for my board when it was
new. WOW!
Roger D.
Roger,
I was a little shocked myself when I saw the "trade-up" pricing for
the VideoVGA. Just like Autodesk, in that the same price applies
regardless of whether the original purchaser opted for a VideoVGA 512K or a
VideoVGA 1M (@ $200 more).
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Roger,
In response to your msg to Jeff Orr concerning a situation you had with
an
asnwering service and Panacea. I don't think you should completely write
us off because of that one incident of miscommunication. Give us another
chance and I guarantee you won't be upset with the product.
-Chris
Panacea
Chris,
It wasn't only my experience with the answering service, but Janet
contacted me via email assuring me that r.1 drivers work fine with r.2, a
full week after I had ordered and received my Vibrant drivers. I think on
May 27, you personally wrote me a message with absolutely no conciliatory
tone whatsoever–"What do you mean Panacea doesn't know what's going on?"
I wrote you a fairly straightforward and honest response as to what my
experiences were, and you chose to ignore that message. To date I have not
received any notification of 3DStudio r.2 ADI drivers even being available.
I know that I'm a registered user. I received a postcard shortly after I
registered my r.1 drivers. So what is it that you're trying to say to me
now? Has Panacea's attitude toward customer service improved? Is the
product supposed to be so good that I don't care about customer service?
Has the Windows market slowed down to a point that us hayseed ADI users are
worth something again? Not to worry–no blood necessary–just a little bit
of mild groveling <g>.
Roger D.
Roger,
I take responsibility for you never getting notified that we finally
started shipping full 3DS 2.0 support in a newer version of our DLD and
PanaRender software. It was something that I had on my long list of to-dos,
and plainly speaking I screwed up and no notification went out. I apologize
for any inconvenience this has caused you and other 3DS 2.0 users out
there. Note that all existing and shipping Panacea DLD386 and PanaRender
software _does_ support 3DS 2.0 with the same hardware compatabilities that
existed under 3DS 1.0.
As far as rendering support for the Diamond SpeedSTAR 24X goes, the most
current drivers are available directly from Diamond, at no charge, with
full support for all 16 and 24 bit modes for rendering in 3D Studio. Our
own DLD386 and PanaRender products do not offer full 24X support currently.
We developed a custom version of that software for Diamond, but will have
full support for the 24X in our upcoming TurboDLD release, which Diamond
will also be receiving for distribution to their SS 24X and Stealth
customers.
To clarify a few other points, we have never used an answering service. We
believe in having a live human in our employ answering the phone. As far as
our customer service attitude goes, we have always believed that our
customers are to be treated well and with respect. However, due to
conditions somewhat beyond our control, our sales and support lines were
flooded by several tens of thousands of calls in March, April, and May of
this year – more than our company, phonesystem, and employees could handle.
It took us a while to reorganize our operations in order to effectively
deal with the call volume, and I believe that you will find informed,
responsive, straightforward, and polite support to be the support you'll
get from Panacea when you now call. Try it.
Again, I would like to apologize to you personally for any problems we may
have caused you.
Jake Richter
Founder, President – Panacea Inc.
Roger,
I have got my Targa+ working quite well in windows. The
resolution/bit-depth is set by using TMODE before executing Win.exe.
Just thought I'd let you know it can be done, but quality may not be
everything you want if you are going to your Mitsu monitor (should look
great on the Nanao, though).
Also, Carl Henderson has the Speedstar 24x. Last we talked about it, he
hadn't tried 24-bit windows yet. Maybe you should give him a call and ask
him about it? Or maybe we should get together for our monthly late beer
fest?
-Mike.
Rodger,
I can only answer for the setup that I am using. Using Qemm 6.01 and I have
to exclude C000-C7FF and also add the XST=C000 after the stleath option.
You can ignore this if you are not running steatlh. I am not using the
windows drivers because I run a TIGA driver at 1280×1024. I would suspect
that you can only run 640×480 in 24 bit color mode. If you want 640×480 16
mil in 3DS you will have to use the Vibrant Drivers. They are the only
drivers that support this color mode that are available today (that I know
of). Be advised that the 24X will not play back .FLC files correctly. .FLI
files work fine. This is a problem in 3DS that will have to be fixed by
ADESK or so I'm told. Hope this helps.
Mark P.
Thanks, Mark.
Eli:
Panacea *is* arguably the leading ADI developer. Depends on how you
measure, but they can make a very good case to be the biggest.
Also, Panacea is *on schedule* regarding their development. I saw the Beta
version of the software tonight (I was in New Hampshire), and it looks on
track for delivery in a couple of weeks.
The entire R12 ADI situation is a mess. The responsibility is Autodesk's –
they shipped R12 earlier than the ADI developers kit was ready. Panacea
chose to take the time to make their drivers right the first time. Most
others have had to dribble out bug fixes as they found problems.
Look – Panacea will bend over backwards to help you out. So give them a
break. I've got no axe to grind in this – I'm an assistant sysop here, and
a contributing editor for CADalyst. I just don't want you to think Panacea
is screwing around.
Evan
I'll back Evan up on that … the folks at Panacea try REAL HARD to treat
their customers right and to be the best in the business. Also they are one
of the most "approachable" companies in the CAD business. If your a
customer of theirs and you feel that someone in their organization has not
treated you correctly, I KNOW that they would want to hear about it and
would want the opportunity to rectify the situation.
Ang
Woah!
Hang on a second here Chris! 🙂 There is a lot of assumption going on in
this conversation so far.
Diamond is currently testing the TurboDLD, but has NEVER shipped it. The
driver found on the 2.02 disk has a Panacea README that supercedes the
manual saying that the DLDCOLOR and rendering options have been disabled
for this release. This was a change made by Panacea during performance
enhancements that was released to Diamond. Panacea has since released a
driver that incorporates both the performance enhancements and the
functional DLDCOLOR and shading capabilities. This driver is available to
customers requiring support for 3D Studio prior to the next 24X disk
release around November 1.
Diamond does not intend to release any products that are in BETA phase by
either Diamond or any licensed organization executing an agreement with
Diamond.
-Jeff Orr
Product Marketing
Diamond Computer Systems, Inc.
Ok. I misunderstood what Eli was actually using. I'm glad that you aren't
releasing BETA drivers. The 24x is a pretty awesome card in terms of
price/performance, and buyers of that card won't be disappointed when they
finally receive our TurboDLD product in November.
-Chris
Panacea