Bought A3000 Cheap with Opalvision

[ltstanfo]

The Opalvision card was considered by many to be *the* video processing / video editing card until the release of the NewTek Video Toaster and Video Flyer.

The Opalvision had a large following in the early 1990s and the developer community for it was a small but active bunch.  If you card came with the factory software, you are in good shape and should give the card a try.  If all you have is the card, start searching the internet for software (ebay, etc...).  

I think you will find that the Opalvision is a good card to experiment with but if you really want to do video editing on an Amiga, the only serious option is to use the NewTek cards mentioned above.

Good luck,
Lee Stanford

[ltstanfo]

AmigaDave,

Thanks for the correction.  You are correct about the timeline of hardware release. As for the roaster chip, I heard an interesting story at one of the St. Louis Amiga shows back in the late 90's that a small batch of the chips (maybe your prototypes?) actually did get produced but by the time they were "available", the company was already out of business.  Supposedly the owner / creater of the board had them in his garage but like alot of other late C= era prototypes, disappeared over time.  FWIW, this story came from a NewTek guy who claimed to know the creater of the board.

Listed below is a link to a meeting held in the 1995 where the status of the roaster chip was actually discussed.  Do a search on the page for Centaur Development.

http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1995/at950727.txt

Regards,
Ltstanfo