CompuServe Thread

#CARDINAL SNAPplus???

3 messages in this thread
#66195From: James TichenorNov 12, 1993 1:48 PM
I'm wondering whether anyone has any experience with the Cardinal SNAPplus video board and controller. This board sounds like a PC animators dream – up to 1024×768 8 bit color (256 colors interlaced), video overlay, video digitization, RGB-S-video-NTSC in and out, VGA out, mini-DIN connector for SV5 video control, 3DS ADI drivers, windows drivers, all for $900! This puts boards like the Targa+ to shame! There must be a catch. Has anyone used this, seen this, heard about it? I'd like to know for sure that it's a good board before trashing the Targa+ board and stepping up to this. Thanks for any info! James
#66256From: John K. JordanNov 12, 1993 10:18 PM
JamesT, >>SNAPplus anyone… I bought the SNAPplus when it first came out. I kept it one day. I sent it back. Some of my observations at the time: Video-out was only active at exactly 640×480 resolution, no higher, no lower – very limited compared to some other boards. I felt the interlaced display for the higher resolutions was unusable for Windows because of the flicker. The on-board VGA was the slowest I've ever used. The software supplied at the time was very buggy – lots of Windows crashes. There were no development tools available for video programming. The quality of the video output was poor – no match for the Targa+. Etc, etc. Some of the software things may have been fixed by now. I have decided, however, that I dislike most "all-in-one" solutions, including electronic music synthesizers and stereos, as it is impossible to upgrade or replace one module. With a Targa or Vista setup, you can easily replace your VGA without throwing away your framebuffer. I ended up with the MAGNI VGA Producer Pro for VGA output, an ATVISTA board for framebuffer and video capture, and an old Diamond SpeedStar VGA that seems fast next to the SNAPplus. JKJ (currently SNAPminus) PS: I appologize in advance for offending anyone who likes the SNAPplus.
#66297From: James TichenorNov 13, 1993 1:46 PM
Thanks for the information on SNAPplus. Maybe we'll give this second thoughts. I thought it was to good for $900. Well, what's frustrating for us is that we have a Targa+ framebuffer, but we can't get it to run higher than 640×486 VGA. We bought a beautiful Sony 1604 SVGA monitor that is stagnating from under use. I asked Truevision if we could upgrade to the Targa+ 64, which offers hi-res (why in the hell the Targa+ 32 doesn't I cannot figure out), but they said negatory (telling me my Sony wouldn't do 1024×768 interlaced, which it will). It sure is a drag to buy a $3000 video card and then be stuck with the resolution of a cheap VGA…