What's Better Gfx Card CybervisionPPC or Picasso 4

[Hyperspeed]

If I had the cash I'd get an original Commodore A4000T, Cyberstorm PPC, Picasso-IV with all the expansions, Videotoaster 4000 (what's the flyer for?) and a plasma display of some sort!

:-)



EDIT: As for giving your machines a name, I've just christened my A1200 desktop 'Quasimodo' because the 1260 has warped the trapdoor cover and it's had 12 years of wear & tear. A few of the letters on the keyboard are now invisible and I have to rely on The Force to guide me.

:-D

[Argus]

Hyperspeed wrote:
If I had the cash I'd get an original Commodore A4000T, Cyberstorm PPC, Picasso-IV with all the expansions, Videotoaster 4000 (what's the flyer for?) and a plasma display of some sort!
:-D

Agreed, a PIV and a CybervisionPPC in the same A4000 would be nice.  Mine has a PIV and Prometheus pci w/ Voodoo3 pci card using an adaptor I got off redrumloa.

The Newtek Flyer is a non-linear direct to disk video audio editing board that fits in a ZII Amiga slot.  It has three scsi 2 controllers using a custom file and video format (VTASC) to record direct to disk video (2 controllers) and direct to disk audio (1 scsi controller).  You can use up to 21 scsi drives on it, iirc, at rates ~6MB/s, so you usually see a scsi tower next to a Toaster/Flyer-equipped A4000D/A4000T.  The Flyer connects via ribbon cable to the Video Toaster4000 and allows direct recording and manipulation of video from the Toaster without using tapes or external recording devices.  The only so-called 'problem' with the Flyer is that video output is composite, rather than split rgb but that much balleyhooed fault is due more prejudice in the video community due to the poor composite quality of VHS.  The Flyer's composite output is actually much better.  Anyway, for the money, it still can do an awful lot of stuff and was way ahead of it's time when it came out.  Worth fooling around with if you can find a VT4000/Flyer setup.

[Hyperspeed]

Ahhh, so that's what I've seen here:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8760237937

Seems daft having such a large tower and then having to get a seperate SCSI tower. Better if Commodore had cut those 2x useless vertical drive bays out and given 3 or 4 SCSI caddies instead.

Composite is pretty crappy for broadcast isn't it? No wonder a lot of American news/weather shows look grainy and washed out.

:-D

[justthatgood]

Hyperspeed.  Whether they have those two drive bays or not, I would still get that tower.

I mean that tower setup is in so much better shape then this one

http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-4000-Tower-with-Toaster-4000-and-Flyer-and-TBC4_W0QQitemZ8762872945QQcategoryZ4598QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem">
Right here

Don't you think. I think so.  I mean I would still get them if I had the money to , just because I would like a setup like that.  

[Hyperspeed]

Some Amigas are just skank.

Yeah, I'd prefer the classic Commodore A4000T but what do you put in those two vertical bays. The machine is wide enough to have accomodated two internal 3.5" drives or two 5.25" drives horizontally.

And you can't mount a CD drive upwards unless you have a slot loader!

I don't know how useful a Toaster/Flyer would be in Europe since it's NTSC only but if there were utilities to convert the end result to MPG you could burn to a VCD/DVD I suppose.

[Argus]

The main reason for having a separate tower for the scsi drives is heat and power.  Some of these Flyer setups have several large capacity scsi drives for each of the three controllers; that's a lot of juice and heat generated.  You want to keep all that away from your rather delicate pcb's in the computer tower, if you can.

[justthatgood]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I know exactly how dangerous SCSI drives can be and I know how much those juice those things suck up when they start up. I'm pretty sure that the engineers of Amiga didn't envision the day that video cards would have to have their own power substation to get started, so I'm sure the Amiga motherboard isn't invincible.

Besides starving the motherboard and cards of power from the already strained power supply, I would think all the drives, the cables to connect them all, the brackets to hold them in place, and the fans to cool all that would make for a very crowded house in a 4000T.  Hey, you could get all fancy by having all your stuff in hot swap trays. :idea:

[tonyvdb]

If you have a look here I have a photo of my home setup. If you look at the top right side you will see that I have an A4000D that I have the Video Toaster 4000 and Flyer system installed with CyberstormPPC. I have all my TBC's and Flyer drives installed in the Tower case just beside the A4000 I have 2 Cheetah 36gig and 4 9gig drives on the two SCSI video devices and one Barracudah 4.5gig drive for audio. I had to install 3 fans in the desktop and there are 6 fans in the Tower to keep things nice and cool.

The composit output of the Flyer is actualy very good at 480 lines D2 quality. You can get an add on card that will give you an S-video out that boost it to 525 lines. (remeber that DVD's are only 480 lines) so as long as your recording device is digital your getting a great poduct like me I record straight to my PC and make DVDs out of it.

[Hyperspeed]

What commercials/broadcasts/shows/movies used the Videotoaster? All that springs to mind is Babylon 5, Seaquest DSV and the Robocop TV series.

I heard somewhere Jurassic Park/T2 used it... or was this more Lightwave? I don't get how Lightwave utilises it...

[Hyperspeed]

Here's a box for Toaster drives:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8762046071

Would make a nice SCSI tower for A1200 owners I suppose...

[Piru]

You can use Picasso 4 with MorphOS 1.4.5 aswell.

http://v4.cybergraphx.de/

CGX4 4.3 rc6 Update

This update will allow CyberGraphX4 owners to use CVision3D/CVision64/PicassoIV
drivers with MorphOS on dual boot setups.
Above cards have been successfully tested with PowerUp MorphOS1.4.5 and A4000T/CSPPC,
other drivers might work as well.

[TjLaZer]

Whats better a Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo or a Nissan Senta?  

[justthatgood]

@TjLaZer

A Ferrari Enzo  :-P

[Lockon_15]

Can I use Picasso 4 SD/FF to display OCS modes (15,6Khz) right from boot? I mean, is SD/FF module independent of RTG's driver so it feed from Denise directly?

I have OCS A2000 (KS 1.3, OS 1.3).

[Argus]

I reckon so, but you need to either break off the ff/sd portion of the PIV to mount in the A2000's video slot or get some kind of adaptor board to put a video slot in-line with a ZII slot.  You're better off with a C= A2320 or Microway FF/SD in the A2000 video slot.  

[Lockon_15]

Thnx for reply.

This is what I have found about P4 SD/FF part of Picasso IV:

Quote from www.amiga-hardware.com

"If the Picasso IV is intended for use in an A2000, the flicker fixer can actually be "snapped" from the card and joined to it by a ribbon cable. This is because the A2000 does not have an inline video slot, like other models".

Perhaps this could actually work just as you said...