Re: Apple IIgs Overlay Card info needed

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Fri, 14 Jul 00 17:13:24 GMT, dlw@trailingedge.com (David Williams)
wrote:

>I just received an Apple IIgs with some cool cards and I'm looking 
>to see if anyone has doc or software for these.  The machine is a:
>
>Apple IIgs Rom 3 (But with a Woz signed case)
>Apple IIgs Memory Expansion (1 meg)
>Transwarp GS
>Apple II Video Overlay Card (This was the main card I wanted!!)
>Applied Engineering RamKeeper
>Battery which seems to go to a small card attached between the 
>PSU and slot 1. I think this keeps power to the Ram.
>2 3.5" drives
>2 5.25" drives
>Keyboard & mouse
>ImageWriter II Printer
>
>But no doc or software for any of it.  I'm interested in anything 
>people can tell/send me on the Video Overlay Card mainly but also 
>the Transwarp GS and the RamKeeper.  Doc, software and drivers.

There is an NDA called VideoMix, an init called AppleIIVOC and a tool
called Tool033 that are included with System 6.0.1.  The NDA is used
for setting the key and non-key colours, the transparency level and to
adjust the tint and colour of the image being displayed on your IIgs'
RGB monitor.  The init helps to reduce flickering of the mouse pointer
I believe.  The tool set is a normal tool set to allow you to access
the card's features from your own programs.

I'm pretty sure the IIe version of VideoMix is not on the System 6.0.1
disks but I could be wrong.

For programming information you can go to the ByteWorks
(http://www.byteworks,org) and order either the Video Overlay Card
Developers Kit (which comes with a 3.5" disk with all the VOC software
on it I believe) or the Programmer's Reference for System 6.0/6.0.1.
The Programmer's Ref only has the information about the tool set but
the Developer's Kit has a little more information about the actual
hardware as well as the tool set info.  Personally, I have both.  :-)

One note about using the VOC.  If you have your monitor hooked up to
the VOC then 3200 colour images won't display properly unless you hook
a cable from the composite output from the IIgs' motherboard to the
composite input of the VOC.

As others have mentioned, SuperConvert can use a VOC to display images
on a second monitor or to display 640x400 interlaced images.  The
other program mentioned simply changes the screen and border colours
of your IIgs to the key colour so that your IIgs becomes a very high
quality composite monitor.  :-)  The only other program I know of that
makes use of the VOC is in an archive called VOC.400.BXY that displays
a slide show of images using the 640x400 interlaced mode.

That's all I can think of for now.  Let me know if you have any other
questions.  I love my VOC and just wish I could find time to work with
it more.  I've come up with a method to use a VOC to display 256
colours in 320x200 mode and 16 colours in 640x200 mode but haven't had
time to work on it.

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