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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: alexh on July 07, 2006, 11:41:25 AM
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A long time ago when PCI graphics cards were the norm, some (all?) of them had an internal passthru connector on them.
This internal connector could be used with MPEG decoder cards and Voodoo 1 & 2 cards etc. to connect them internally and avoid using the loopback cables.
Do any popular Amiga enabled PCI gfx cards still have these interfaces? (They looked a little like a clock port header)
I've not looked for a long time, but if any of them do, it would be easy to make a cheap Automon.
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There aren't any drivers for cards like that unfortunately.
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moto
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The PCI voodoo3 3000 has one, 26pins in 2 rows...
it is stupid, the pci busboards should offer by default a built-in switcher like the picassoII...
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There are for at least 1... my VIRGE DX card has one.
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also my generic virge 375 has one, as well as the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (same 375) has one...
interesting idea Alexh, tell me more!
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keropi wrote:
The PCI voodoo3 3000 has one, 26pins in 2 rows.
Oooh, I'll ask about (and everyone here do the same) and lets see if we can get details about the connector and its signals.
It should be EASY to convert one of these cards + internal scandoubler into a CHEAP, quality, Automon solution.
the pci busboards should offer by default a built-in switcher like the picassoII...
And how do you suggest they do that?
They would have had to include a cable which clipped over the AGA chip, probably a scandoubler too, it would have doubled the price of the PCI adapter dont you think?
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Ahh, is that what they were for, I always though it must be some factory testing/digagnostic header.
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yes they could, they would only have to provide 2 inputs, an output and a digital switch which would be controlled by p96/cgx like it does on zorro RTG.
but let's search this FutureConnectors on the vga's... interesting!
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I think I've found it...
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/pc/vga_feature.html
It is not what I thought it was and possibly useless :(
I could have sworn that you could CHROMA-KEY data IN through this port, but it appears it is nothing more than a glorified internal VGA connector.
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so alexh do you understand it? how would it be possible to make the pci-vga to understand when to switch to this input?
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If it can be made to an input I thought it used a form of chroma-key.. If the screen is all MAGENTA it replaced these pixels with pixels from input.
If it CAN be made an input... maybe AGA in a window would be possible... but I am stretching a bit far on this one without finding out if it can be an input.
I thought that MPEG cards and TV cards etc. came INTO the VGA cards... but perhaps it was the otherway around.
If it was bidirectional then YES!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_connector
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so we bonned again? :lol:
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I will ask around and have some talks with other Amiga hardware designers. I'll concentrate on the connectors on the Virge and Voodoo3 (hopefully the same) and see if it has any use.
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alexh wrote:
Do any popular Amiga enabled PCI gfx cards still have these interfaces? (They looked a little like a clock port header)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:V5-5500-press.jpg)
Alex, are we talking about the connector at the top, in the middle, of the card?
My Voodoo3 3000 has one like that.
Edited because....
Hmmmm............. seem to have messed that up. The image URL is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:V5-5500-press.jpg
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One the Amiga Side, you can get the signal at the entrance of the VP101-3BA (or ADV191KP30 depending of your A1200 mobo...) :
http://assets.zarlink.com/DS/zarlink_VP101_JAN_01.pdf
but i'm sure that you'll need at least a buffer system like on commodore VGA adapter.
Good Luck.
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Alex, are we talking about the connector at the top, in the middle, of the card?
Yes.
you can get the signal at the entrance of the VP101
Heh, I worked on the team that designed that Chip :-) I've got a box of 1000's of them and the Tapes of the design. And probably the load testboards.
I'd probably get the signals directly from either the Lisa chip, just as modern internal scandoublers do.
OR
From the Scandoubler's FPGA/CPLD before it's DAC.
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At the moment I cannot find enough RELIABLE information on the VGA Feature connector, specifically the one on the Voodoo3.
At the moment I am assuming that this is just an output so of no use to us.
I am also assuming that it is 8-bit non-paletted colour too so the colour / picture quality wouldnt be very good.
If it turns out to be bidirectional, and enhanced to more than 8-bits then we would be in buisness.
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go go go! :-D :-D :-D :-D
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Didn't the VooDoo 3 work in SLI mode? If that's the case then there should be inputs and outputs on that connector...
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no sli mode for voodoo3...
voodoo2's had sli...
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alexh, he say:
>At the moment I cannot find enough RELIABLE information on the VGA Feature connector, specifically the one on the Voodoo3.
If its any help most of tracks from the pins on the connector that are doing anything seem to be going down towards a small chip called:
S3861Q
9949
RO3968G
This is on a Voodoo3 3000
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Gojirax wrote:
Didn't the VooDoo 3 work in SLI mode? If that's the case then there should be inputs and outputs on that connector...
Don't think so - they stopped SLI with the voodoo2 according to the 3dfx website remenants through wayback.
It does seem to be a standard connector though, as there is mention of the voodoo 3 being used in conjunction with DVD decoders here (http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/archive/index.php/t-25949.html), although it could just be anecdotal.
Check the last thread on:
Oh FFS! This submission is being troublesome.
ht_____tp://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:o-cwV1Olj-8J:w_____ww.optibase.com/
Forum.aspx%3Ff%3D17%26p%3D3+voodoo+site:optibase.com&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
"Videoplex Xpress compatibility questions" and replies.
Sorry, but you'll have to paste the URL directly into your browser bit-by-bit and take out the underscores by hand. The 'link' function wasn't working for the cached URL and it was making the entire page about 3m wide :-)
According to this thread it is a VMI bus - industry standard, should be easy to find some reference material on it.
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I've found some diagrams of the Voodoo cards, and the connector in question is called a Digital Video Input Connector apparently.
There's some info and a pin layout here:
http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/Temp/Voodoo/Diagrams.htm
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Digital Video INPUT sure as hell makes it sound more useful.
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I was thinking that. :)
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But the pinout doesnt match the VGA Function Connector... which means either this document is wrong or it is a custom connector and that means even MORE work to discover its secrets
It's input is REC601 digital video which is not exactly what the Amiga outputs.
There is an I2C interface on there probably to allow you to program the RAMDAC externally.
Working out how this works is going to be a nightmare... we need someone who used to work at 3DFX.
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So excuse my ignorance, but in an ideal scenario what might be achieved with the connector?
Don't know if this helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCIR_601
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Worst case: Automon... automatic switching between gfx cards and amiga native.
Best case: Native Amiga display in a window in RTG mode.
However it is looking less like the Voodoo3 has a VGA Feature connector and some strange 601 video connector. Good for MPEG, not very useful for Amiga's.
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>However it is looking less like the Voodoo3 has a VGA Feature
Dang.... well, I'll keep my fingers crossed (I'm an Amigan, after all). Thanks.
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I have a Voodoo 3 3000 on my Mediator. I have minimal electronics experience but let me know if there's anythingI can check/test for you. This is exciting :-)
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moto
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I have an ATI PCI card in my current PC that has a connector on it. The connector was for an ATI ISA TV tuner card. The TV tuner card drew power from the ISA slot but was connected by a cable (like a floppydisk cable) to the PCI graphics card.
It was a pretty cool combo; your TV ariel went in the TV card and you could have TV in a window, or as the windows backdrop even.
The PCI card is branded xpert@play, and was basically a rage pro chip, (or was it rage IIc ?)which has the mach64 core.
I later had an ATI Rage 128, which did better 3D but had a similar clockport-like connector on it; ATI had to send me a new cable with some pins crossed over in order to use it with their TV tuner. I dont have that card anymore. I may still have the ISA TV tuner and cables somewhere though.
ATI ages ago phased out the separate TV card in favour of the "all in wonder" which was everything on one card.
Might be worth looking into.
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Is anything happening with this? I for one would love to loop the Amiga's RGB/Composite output back in to my Voodoo. From the looks of it we're not even sure it's possible.
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moto
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@alexh
Try here, wealth of programming/developer information on the Voodoo series and architecture
3dfx technical reference (http://www.falconfly.de/reference.htm)
specifically, scroll down about half way and look for the file 3dfx Voodoo3 Reference its about 1200kb in size.
Hope it helps.
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That programming manual makes reference to a video input. Hmmm..... :-)
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moto
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Unfortunately the video input has to be in REC601 format (Y'CbCr) sometimes known as YUV.
Normal Amiga output is of course RGB.
There is a SLIM chance that the VP101 video encoder, used to generate composite, has it's REC 601 outputs enabled.
If it does, it should be possible to create a clip which clips over the VP101 and connects to the Voodoo feature connector and allows you to display Amiga native screens both in a window and full screen.
Some more research required, and as I dont have either an A1200 or a PCI board, or a Voodoo 3 I dont think I will do anymore.
It is VERY possible that with only a small investment of time you could make a DIRT cheap, medium quality (some data loss through 2x colour space conversions), scandoubler which may have the extra cool ability to be displayed in an RTG window.
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I have an A1200 with a Voodoo. If you ever fancy experimenting on it then it's only 278 miles from Plymouth to Milton Keynes :-P
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moto
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@Alexh
I have a lot of spares, including a mint stock A1200, expansion boards, and possibly some Voodoo cards. If you'd like to play with this idea, then I can extended loan them down to you for postage.
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The VP101 is not the chip I remember.
It was designed by our team but long before I got there. It is not a true video encoder and doesnt have REC601 outputs, just analog RGB and Composite. The signals are probably there internally but not pinned out.
This means you'd have to have a small CPLD/FPGA to do the RGB to Y'CbCr colorspace conversion. Easy to do and I could provide VHDL for anyone interested :-)
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I think this could be an excellent product. I don't think there are any Voodoo owners who wouldn't want this upgrade. Alex, if you really want to develop this then I am more than happy to arrange to make my Amiga available to you for testing.
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moto
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what an awesome idea!
i know the Virge used the Phillips "Scenic Highway" bus, which as i understand it, was/is fairly open for development.
Just the normal driver issues for the miggy to use Mpeg cards etc. (there wern't any).
The virge/scenic highway combo allowed the external video (whatever it was) to be mapped as a texture for 3D rendering amongst other things. so maybe the voodoo3 has something a little more advanced?
eitherway, wicked idea! :-)
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For those of us with video slots, I assume it should be possible to shove the required chips & pins on a card to stick in the video slot?
-Paul
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..maybe Alex can find some information here (but I doubt..) http://www.3dfx.cz/3dfx.htm
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@MASACREWILL
Thanks but all the information (about the electrical and timing) of the interface was provided on the previous link.
Programming the 3dfx chip for this mode and whether or not the interface automatically scandoubles is not known at this time.
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@Motorolin
I am not 100% interested in this area. I have possibly the four best Zorro cards: XSURF, Picasso IV, Fastlane and DKB3128 I am not really interested in PCI.
I noticed that these boards had this interface.
I noticed that lack of Automons / Scandoublers is always a sore point.
I had hoped it would be a simple "wire up n go" but as we have discovered it is not.
The only interest now is to trying to stimulate the likes of Individual Computing or perhaps someone who has a PCI setup into developing the idea further.