By Colin Fisher-McAllum
Ever since Kev had the BlowUp FX fitted to his Falcon he has had a smug grin on his face whenever we make a speed comparison. Whether it's a passing, "Hasn't yours loaded yet?" or a snide, "Oh you are still in 16 colour mode. Mine is faster than that in 256 colours!" He was always happy to extol the virtues of his FX - and rightly too.
However, Nemesis [The Greek goddess of vengeance or retributive justice - How rightly named!] is about to wield her axe.
Occasionally, when we buy something for our computer, that purchase can later be looked back on as a landmark. My first hard drive was one such landmark. It changed the way I worked and the pleasure I got from that work. My Falcon was also a landmark, being able to use colour on a high resolution, albeit standard Falcon VGA screen, was amazing. I just know I will look back on the fitting of Nemesis to be one of these landmarks. It has been like a breath of fresh air.
Nemesis comes from the well proven stable of the Black Scorpians who have brought us such goodies as Apex Media and Expos‚. It is a hardware system accelerator that upgrades many internal features of a standard Falcon. Fitting is within the bounds of anyone with good, above average, soldering skills. Having read a draft of the manual that is to be supplied with the DIY Nemesis kit, I can confirm that at one time I would have felt quite confident at carrying out the work myself. However, my hand-eye co-ordination is not what it used to be, so I took advantage of the fitting service. To be honest, unless you are totally happy with your soldering skills, you are well advised to have the job done by the professionals [What, Bodie and Doyle! Ed]. Currently the fitting is being shared by the BSS boys, but The Upgrade Shop will be taking on the work soon.
My Falcon was packed up and sent to Dave Murphy along with a note asking him to be gentle with my baby. A few days later my machine was back on [or rather under] my desk where it belongs. I spent that evening on the phone to Kev while we compared speed and efficiency. I am delighted to say that Nemesis stacked up well against his BlowUp FX.
The Nemesis comes with some little auto folder utilities to switch it on and to set the speeds to High or Low in VGA modes. There is a separate RGB program and you need to request a hardware switch to be fitted if you want to be able to use both VGA and RGB. Another auto program enables a VGA True Colour mode of 640x480.
Has it been plain sailing? Well no, it turned out that I have a flaky DSP in my Falcon and anything that used this chip had problems if run in Nemesis High. For example, block handling in Apex Media or using a DSP MPEG player gave screen corruption. However all worked well in Nemesis Low. Speeds can be switched on the fly, there is no need to re-boot so I kept a set of icons on my desktop, one each for Nemesis high, low and off. The only time I have found I have to switch Nemesis off is when I want to print via Calamus. I think it's worth mentioning that part of the fitting process is linked into the MIDI and I have found that some utilities [eg. HSModem MIDI setter] will switch Nemesis to low. Cubase Score seems to have no problems, but I have spent little time in this program since having Nemesis fitted. While talking about problems, you should know that the Falcon Wing memory board can cause problems as can some populated memory boards. It is well worth while talking to Titan Designs [BSS distributors] about your Falcon memory.
As I have just mentioned the down side of Nemesis I think I should
point out I was still impressed enough to have another one fitted to the
Falcon that runs 42BBS. This one was fitted by Doug Little, and the
Falcon turned out
not to have a flaky DSP, so I have swapped the machines over and have
not used Nemesis Low since! The BBS Falcon is housed in a DeskTopper
and as it's on 24 hours a day, this is an advantage as it has better
air circulation and helps keep the system cool. I have added a second
fan - just to be safe. My own Falcon is still housed in it's normal
case along with my Expose card, so you can guess Nemesis takes up very
little space. It is actually in two parts, the main board and a
buffer. My original Falcon had the common 256 colour mode - "Your
output device is not receiving data" - SCSI problem. As part of the
normal fitting procedure a modification is made that cures this SCSI
problem. 256 colours in a resolution of 800x608 is now my normal
everyday working desktop.
Having been a tester for Videlity, [See preview in AP#4 Ed] I use this excellent utility as my screen expander and it's well worth paying the extra £14.99 to buy this program as you can expand all normal Falcon screen modes. Videlity can use the increased internal clock speed or the ScreenBlaster and BlowUp Hard external clocks. Like me, you may not want huge amounts of pixels on screen, but use the enhanced clock speed to give the best refresh rate your monitor can give you. In 256 colour 800x608 I am getting a horizontal refresh rate of 48kHz with a vertical refresh rate of 73Hz. In True Colour 640x480 a horizontal refresh rate of 31kHz and a vertical refresh rate of 62Hz. Using the standard Falcon 640x480 mode in 16 or 256 colours I get the staggeringly rock-solid refresh rates of 56kHz horizontal and 111Hz vertical. I do however have a good monitor!
Actually, I know I said that 256 colours is my normal working mode, but actually, I now often find myself working in True Colour and I am staggered by the general feel of speed. In AP#4 I completed a two part review of Positive Image in which I extolled it's virtues but said it was rather slow at some processes. In TC Mode with Nemesis, Positive Image is a dream. Likewise DA's Vector is now a pleasure to use. Being able to use a decent and steady resolution, it is worth while working with graphic programs like these in TC as there is no dithering. The BSS boys will soon be releasing an upgrade to Apex Media that will take advantage of these improved TC resolutions.
I have purposely avoided filling this review with lots of specs and comparitive figures as I am trying to impress upon you the crisp new feel given to a Falcon once it has been Nemesised. Papyrus, CAB, NameNet, True Paint, archivers, everything runs faster.
Having been shocked by the simple pleasure of actually using my Falcon in True Colour mode in a decent resolution and at a decent speed, I cannot recommend Nemesis too highly. There cannot be many Falcon owners that do not own a copy of NVDI. I am confident that it will not be too long before the same can be said of Nemesis.
My next enhancement may well be the fitting of an AfterBurner - I am turning into a real spead-freak. Nemesis works well with this 040 upgrade and gives truely outstanding results... I can't wait!
Contact: | Titan Designs on 0121 693 6669 |
E-Mail: | 100345.2350@compuserve.com |
Price: | £59.95 or £49.95 to APEX users |
Fitting: | £40 + £10 return carriage |