NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/hardware-part1/1578

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 1.7 KB

Path: news.production.compuserve.com!news
From: Rev. John Jackman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware,rec.video.desktop,rec.video.production
Subject: Draco & V-Lab Upgrade
Date: 18 Jan 1996 03:09:37 GMT
Organization: Moravian Church
Message-ID: <4dkdlh$5ch$[e-mail]>

Just got off the phone with Matt Drabick, who writes for AV/Video
and sometimes for VTU.  He has in hand a full-blown Draco System
for review.  Has the standard 16-bit V-Lab board in it, not the
32-bit Draco bus V-Lab, which is still being developed.  He is
very happy with it, says the 060 cuts rendering time, etc.
Improved picture quality even with 16-bit board - can go to 100%
JPEG.  Big news for current V-Lab board owners, however, is that
Macrosystems has dropped the idea of developing a Zorro-III
version of V-Lab; they now propose selling an 060 accelerator for
existing Amigas with an on-board Draco bus.  Current owners would
be able to put this in their existing machines, and upgrade to
the 32-bit Draco bus V-Lab board.  Combination should give
top-end BetaCam quality, with transfers of around 7-8 megs/ sec
sustained and up.  Even better news is that they are working on
the DEC Alpha coprocessor option which should do renders at about
20x the rate of a stock 040-25.  Wow.  Matt is somewhat doubtful
that Amiga Tech will actually bring out the announced PowerPC
chip Amiga (hope he's wrong), but he is fairly confident that
Macrosystems will actually finish and distribute the DEC Alpha
coprocessor.  This sounds very good for current V-Lab Motion
system owners.

--
The Rev. John Jackman - Director of Video Ministries - Moravian Church
Multimedia Consultant - Illumination Learning Systems
E-Mail [e-mail]