Re: Video Upgrade

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Supertimer writes ...

 ....
 
> The Second Sight does not support three modes...double hires,
> fill mode, and 3200 colors.  Dunno why it does not like DHR.
> You can imagine why fill mode won't work...it shadows the GS
> video RAM and in fill mode, only an outline of the graphic is in
> the GS video memory.  3200 does not work because the shadow
> hardware (indeed, the system bus) can't handle the speed of
> the updates.
> 
> Otherwise, the Second Sight performs as advertised...your
> Apple IIGS RGB or SVGA monitor plugs into the card (two
> outputs are provided).  The second sight watches the GS
> video RAM and duplicates the info in the VGA RAM.  What
> you see is actually a VGA duplicate of the GS video...

 ....

> TR is a completely different concept.  Put it simply, this is a
> blitter card with hardware texture mapping and multiple bitplanes.
> It frees up the GS CPU during animations.  It also supports many
> more colors per scan line.
> 
> The TR plugs into an expansion slot and, unlike the Second Sight,
> the video goes out the standard GS RGB port.  The TR does not
> interfere with standard GS video modes (no shadowing needed)
> and only kicks in when its modes are used.  I think if the TR
> beat the Second Sight to the market, things would be much
> different today.  Wolfenstein 3D for the GS would run 10x faster
> and GS DOOM would be possible...

 ....

     Thanks for the information.

     It looks like neither approach will do the job today. The cost of
making an SS-style board with fixes for double-hires, etc. plus modern
PC graphics capabilites would be very high.

     On the other hand, the Turbo-Rez appears to settle for using the
current GS monitor and would not allow connecting an SVGA display. Back
in the 80's-- as late as 1988-- the board could have made a major
difference. Now, it is just one more piece of A2 hardware which failed
to appear when it was needed.

     So far, it seems that our best route is to convert the current GS
video to SVGA and use a PC video board to handle new graphics.



 
Rubywand