New A-EON Music Card for Classic Amigas

[wawrzon]

@wawrzon

don't worry, it's very easy - just call OpenLibrary on prisma.library and if it fails, then don't play any streamed audio. No reason for it to be complicated.

perfect. thats what i mean!

[Ancalimon]

Interesting. I hope they add Toccata emulation, so we can use it under MovieShop.

That's a good idea. That's why I swapped my Delfina Lite with a Toccata.


And is it able play mp3 files at 320kbps? At least on a Zorro slot?

[spirantho]

Not sure about Toccata emulation - depends on how difficult it is to add and how useful it would be.

It can play 320kbps mp3, yes.

[Ancalimon]

Another thing came to my mind. What about midi soundfont support. No need for midi in and out. Just a hardware way to play midi files and maybe even play games that have midi without much slowdown?

[wawrzon]

but this chip has no hardware midi afaik. it is just streaming audio hardware decoder. for hardware midi ( polifonic & multitimbral )you would need a real soundcard hardware.

[amigakit]

OK, another update.

All the Prisma cards arrived from Michael and they look great.



Michael is also manufacturing an audio back plate PCB for towered A1200's and big box Amigas which will an optional extra for the card.

I have been really busy with AMIStore development so decided last weekend to devote to Prisma instead

In the meantime, Spirantho very kindly sacrificied one of his weekends to add an AREXX port to the Prisma.library which is indeed very handy.

So I changed my PrismaControl programme to take advantage of Spirantho's efforts.  Now PrismaControl uses Arexx messaging and it works well for all of my tests so far on my A1200T.



It also means all you programmers out there can make your programs control the Prisma card with a few simple Arexx messages, for example:

rx "ADDRESS PRISMA_MSG_PORT 'PLAY'"

rx "ADDRESS PRISMA_MSG_PORT 'STOP'"

rx "ADDRESS PRISMA_MSG_PORT 'VOLUME 10'"

I haven't yet tried it, but I also believe that I could modify my IBrowse MIME settings to play OGG, MP3, WAV files from webpage links.  Any suggestions on this would be good.

[AltRN8]

When will these be available for purchase?

[kickstart]

Im lost about the progress of this card, but i just see everytime mp3 players... that is the definitive use of the card?

[magnetic]

Not sure about Toccata emulation - depends on how difficult it is to add and how useful it would be.

It can play 320kbps mp3, yes.

Toccata emu would be a big deal becuase there are many vlab motion boards out there and not alot of toccata. Its a really nice board, but most of the ahi soundcards can do what it does already no?

[F0LLETT]

Im lost about the progress of this card, but i just see everytime mp3 players... that is the definitive use of the card?

No, it plays lots of formats and has other features.
All of which are listed in this thread and press release.

What you said is like saying, "I keep seeing .wav files is that all this cd-rw drive is good for".
Makes no sense.

[spirantho]

OGG Vorbis playing is much more important to me.
But yes, I can't stress enough, the card is made for playing compressed audio streams above all else.

[AmigaOldskooler]

@Spirantho @Follett

I was just wondering.. could one make a similar card only for videos (MPEG, AVI and all those formats)? It would be great fun playing videos/clips on the 1200 without lag. And it could be used for productions as well.. games containing video footage etc. Many possibilities.

If AmigaKit decided to release such an item, I'd buy it for sure.

[spirantho]

It's a nice idea, but the A1200 wouldn't be enough, I don't think. The ClockPort would be out, for sure (far too slow) maybe a Zorro-III card could send the data fast enough, I'm not sure - Zorro-II would be enough for smaller videos.
It's a possibility, after all the CD32 had an FMV cartridge, but I'm not sure how easy or worthwhile it'd be given it'd be limited by the bus bandwidth.

[KimmoK]

I think we will soon see FPGA based CPU+GPU cards sold to classic fans.
With that kind of card you should be able to build mpeg decoder on the chip as well.
(only depends on what fits on/in the FPGA chip used)

[AmigaOldskooler]

@Spirantho

Thanks for the reply. I did not consider the speed of the ClockPort. Maybe AmigaKit looks into it and comes up with an ingenious device. It's worth hoping for. As you said, the CD32 had the FMV unit.

@KimmoK

Are these accelerator cards for the trapdoor? Who is making them?

[wawrzon]

making dedicated cards for every single task there is will make you run out of expansion ports pretty soon, i doubt this is anything more than gimmick.