DPS-PAR (animation recorder)

[Exitof99]

I use Western Digital, Quantum Fireball, and Maxtor drives all the time with my PAR, the only issue is that the PAR won't address higher than 8 gigs which is entirely due to the PAR software. I've used many different drive sizes all without any problems. I suggest getting a 7200 RPM 10 gig drive so you can get the best frame capture rate, and my rule the rule is buy the cheapest you can.

I like to find $40 hard drives that are 'too small' to sell for a higher price. Try looking at www.pricewatch.com for these new older drives. Currently, I see Western Digital 7200 RPM 20 gig drives for $40. Try one of those, and if it doesn't work, which it should, then it's a great hard drive for only $2 per gig!

[Exitof99]

Hi Dave,

I just happened to sign back up again today, I used to be on the forums before the several hacking incidents that occured way back when.

I figure that if I can help anyone out, I will! The drive list was also very challenging to look at when I first got my PAR, but I made the mistake of buying a 'PAR' drive from Hal of Harddrivers which was simply a 1 gig Quantum Fireball. Shortly after, I ordered a similar Fireball (ii2c or something) and it worked great.

My question to you is have you ever been able to export with out corrupting the video or stills? My experience with my particular PAR has been that I CAN NOT archive the video to anything as the software interface between the PAR card and Amiga just simply was not 100%. I tried getting the PC PAR card, which is infinitely more difficult to use, even though it has more software. I tried mounting the Amiga drives to it, but the files names weren't compatable, since the PC PAR wanted 8.3 DOS format file names!!!

My solution has simply been buy another hard drive rather than backing up data. Cost comparision between (as of a few years ago) a $40 HD and 4 - 2 gig DAT tapes or $13 for CD-Rs or over $100 for a Jaz disk, it made sense just to not hassle with the time backing up and just swap drives!

Another 'improvement' you can do: I moved my PAR setup to my A1200 which has no PC slots for the TBC-IV. The TBC IV in only needs the power to be supplied to the card, so only a few pins need to even be connected. I went a little over board with my temporary solution and installed the TBC-IV card in an old useless 486 tower with the motherboard not even having any RAM on it! I had to extend the cable that goes between the PAR card and TBC-IV card, which is just a standard SCSI 50 pin internal cable.

My monster has no issues, except looking rather bulky and cumbersome.

In the end, I found it worthless to use the PAR card as there are PC video capture cards out there for $40 that work, but are really a pain in the ass software wise sometimes. I bought a Pinnicle DV10 Studio card on sale a few years ago for $80, it works, but I had a problem with capturing full frame. I figured the problem, the video signal had too much going on in the overscan area, and was crashing the capture. But my old friend TBC-IV stripped the crappy sync and cleaned it up so that I could capture full frame again!

Boys and their toys...