Re: Looking for AST Vision Plus/Visionary GS software

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"roughana" <andrew.roughan@writeme.com> wrote:

>roughana wrote:
>> Mitchell Spector wrote:
>> > Hopefully someone reading this can help me out.
>>
>> I have the AST Vision Plus with software.
>
>Actually, I must have the VisionPlus Enhanced.
>
>Allison 1.0.5.beta
>Preliminary Distribution Disk
>(c)1990-1992 Excellent Software
>By Scott Gentry
>Distributed by Alltech Electronics
>For the VisionPlus Enhanced

    I did a bit of research after my first post and discovered a few
interesting things about the video capture card:

- The first software written for the card was called "VisionEffects",
which apparently will only work with the original 1986 AST card.
If you have the original (unmodified) card, this is the only software 
that works.

- In January 1990 a new company called Virtual Realities bought 
out the remaining stock of AST cards, fixed some hardware and 
firmware bugs and renamed it "Visionary GS". Apparently just a
few months later LRO/New Concepts took over and rename it
again, calling it the "Vision Plus Enhanced". 

- There may have been, and probably was, an updated version 
of VisionEffects that worked with the Visionary GS/VP Enhanced
as a temporary solution. Though what version it was, or what name
it went by, I'm not sure. Anyone know?

- Allison was a completely new software package and released
in late 1990-1991. It replaced VisionEffects and was required for
the Visionary GS/Vision Plus Enhanced. It was recommended 
you have your Visionary GS recalibrated to work optimally with
the software (I think there's some pots on the card, I wonder if
mine was ever recalibrated sometime during its life).

- Alltech took over the card at some point, probably around 1993.
I have no idea if they updated the ROM, or LRO/New Concepts
before them. Only person who'd probably know is Tony Diaz.

>====
>*******IMPORTANT******* Allison 1.0.5. Release Note:
[snip]

>I don't think there was a later version than 1.0.5 ever released. :(
>I don't think full screen monochrome digitizing works in full screen
>mode. :(

    I did manage to get ahold of VisionEffects 1.0 (written in 1986).
Unfortunately it's unlikely it will work since the newer firmware on 
the Visionary GS makes it "invisible" to the software's detection 
routines.

    It looks like the Allison software is what I'm going to need. 

>I never received Allison 2.0 or a user manual :(

    From what I could gather it was never finished or released. 
Too bad since motion video capturing was planned (i.e. capture
video clips with audio on the GS, much like what was seen
in the DreamVision demo and the Mini-Movie format).

>What happened to Scott Gentry?

Here's what he posted to the group a decade ago, it explains
what happened to Allison 2.0.:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.apple2/msg/8c29e26f4af80dc4?dmode=source&hl=en

Mitchell Spector