Subject: REVIEW: Impact Vision 24
From: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Moderator <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

--text follows this line--
[This was sent to me by Charles Hill of AMReport fame.  The last working
address I have for him is: Charles Hill/InfoTrak
<[email-masked]>. -JLT3]

Great Valley Products' Impact Vision 24 (IV24) board is a dual-slot
expansion board for the A3000 or A2000 series of computers.  It is 
designed to provide 12 or 24 bits of color information to an Amiga
screen; 12 bit, non-HAM, live picture-in-picture (PIP) and either
12 bit or 24 bit real time frame grabbing from a separated RGB video
source.

                                  HARDWARE
                                  --------

The IV24 package comes in two versions: A2000 and A3000.  The A2000
package includes an extra cable to hook the board up to the A2000's
video slot.  Both versions include the IV24 internal expansion card
and a multi-function cable.

The IV24 card is designed to fit in the A3000's Zorro/Video inline
slots.  The two card-edge connecters look similar to an ISA-AT style
card, though much larger.  Beta test boards had visible jumpers on
the back of the card and came without an end brace to screw down to
the machine, but final release boards had no jumpers and the proper
end brace.

Writing on the board says:  "Great Valley Products"
                         "Amiga 3000/PVA Revision IV"

The board has a very polished look.  It is a "done" product.

The end of the board has a 31 KHz output port, a multi-input port and
a three position switch.  The 31 KHz output port can be software 
switched down to 15 KHz and is designed to hook to your monitor.  The
IV24 board has the ability, unlike Commodore's flicker-unit, to 
de-interlace/scan double 15 KHz output.

The multi-input plug hooks up to a special cable supplied with the board
and provides four input connecters and two output connecters.  On the
input side, there is separated Red, Green, Blue and Composite RCA-style
plugs.  For output, there is an S-VHS connecter and an RCA-style composite
out plug.  This combination allows for output to a composite destination
(television, VCR, etc.), an S-VHS receiver (television, VCR, etc.) or
RGB (monitor, film recorder, etc.)

I had no occasion to test the composite or S-VHS output.

                                INSTALLATION
                                ------------

The IV24 card is designed to fit in the A3000's inline Zorro/Video
slot (topmost slot).  A connecter cable and adaptor plug is provided
for A2000 owners.

The card slides in and screws down smoothly in an A3000.  It is a tight
fit, but from what I understand all A3000 cards are a tight fit.  On an
A2000 there is a bit more work.

The A2000 model plugs into a Zorro slot and then a cable is run from a
special connector on the board over to the video slot.  The manual
recommends running the cable *over* the power supply until the card
burns itself in, then reinstalling it by running the cable *under* the
power cage.  To do this, you must physically remove the power cage.
This is not an experience for the squeamish or for those with machines
still covered by a warrantee.  Have your dealer do it (most charge 
around $30 if you purchased the card elsewhere -- $0 if you got it from
them.)

                                  SOFTWARE
                                  --------

GVP, while selling the unit, claims that the software is all gamma-test
and still being worked on.

That is an understatement.

The IV24 package includes three commercial software packages: Scala,
Caligari and MacroPaint; and a host of IV24 utilities: IVPIP, IVCP,
IVGRAB, IVVIEW, IVREAD and IVCMD.

The three commercial programs are all versions designed to support the
IV24 board.  Of the three, Caligari is the most finished product.

MACROPAINT
----------
MacroPaint requires 5 Mb of RAM to run, and it crashes and burns if you
have less memory.  MacroPaint is also the most bug-ridden of the three
packages.  The manual has a nice large "Preliminary GAMMA" stamp on it,
and they ain't kidding.

MacroPaint's biggest strength (besides being able to work on 24-bit
pictures in real time <Hi NewTek!>) is it's support for ARexx macros.
MacroPaint can be controlled via ARexx and can send commands out via
ARexx.  This is very handy for those or us with hordes of memory and
a program like ADPro sitting in the background.

The memory used for the images in MacroPaint must be contiguous.  If
you want to load a 1.2 meg image, you must have 1.2 megs of contiguous
RAM.

In normal operations, I have ADPro running with a 1.75 meg buffer (to
handle 24-bit pictures); DNet running (hooking my A2000 upto the A3000)
and now MacroPaint.

Now, with ADPro taking 2 megs, MacroPaint taking 5 megs and a loaded
picture taking another 1, that is a total of 8 megabytes of RAM in
use already.  What happens if you want to load in a second image or
a full-screen brush?  You run out of memory, even on a 10 megabyte
A3000, that's what!  If you want to fully manipulate 24-bit images, get
LOTS of RAM, then buy some more for extra measure.  I recommend at least
10 megabytes for any multitasking while running MacroPaint.  Having
MacroPaint send an image to ADPro for manipulation and then getting it
back is wonderful.  With the requirements for contiguous memory, you 
need a lot of RAM to spare.

SCALA
- -----
In truth, I haven't used Scala very much.  It looks like a smooth
program, but it ships on a grand-total of one (I counted twice) disk
for the IV-24.  The regular version ships on 6 or 7 disks!  Has GVP
got some fantastic new compression method I'm unaware of?  I don't know
what's missing but then again I don't have the original version of
Scala around.

CALIGARI 2.0
- ------------
I haven't played much with Caligari, either.  It seems to be quite
nice and I haven't been able to crash it.  Unlike Scala and MacroPaint,
Caligari doesn't multitask.  Like Scala, there is no ARexx port.

Some friends of mine purchased the IV24 board solely because it
came with Caligari.  They had been using Caligari Broadcast with a
Bridgeboard and a Targa board and wanted to try it out.  While they
are impressed with the product, it isn't upto Caligari Broadcast
standards.  Considering the Broadcast version is thousands of dollars
itself...no one expected it to be.

Caligari requires an accelerated Amiga with a math coprocessor and at
least 3 Mb of RAM to run.  The faster the better, the more RAM the better.

Caligari does not do ray tracing, but renders in another fashion.  Ray 
tracing takes longer, but yields better results.  Caligari renders
quicker age capture,
output destination, input destination and board-level registers.

Separated RGB input is necessary to do frame grabbing or PIP.  Color splitters
are available, but I used an RGB camera.  A color splitter would be
necessary to capture input from a composite source, such as a VCR.  True
RGB is cleaner and sharper, though.

The IV24 board will provides two banks of 12-bit RAM.  This allows for
double-buffered 12 bit (4096 color) animations or a single-buffered
24 bit (16.7 million color) image.  12 bit images are not HAM, but true
12 bit.

PIP is 12 bit live video overlayed on a 12 bit Amiga screen.  The screen
can be swapped so that the live video is the background and the Amiga
screen is in the PIP.  The PIP can be resized, moved, zoomed and the
scale changed.  It can be turned on and off and all this can be done
with a mouse, keyboard or via ARexx.  The manual says the PIP can be
frame grabbed, but so far this function does not work.

Full 24 bit images can be frame grabbed without any problem.

The IV24 has three display modes:  full Amiga graphics; keyed source and
full external.

Full Amiga graphics is just that -- an Amiga display.  Full external is
a direct feed of the RGB signal so you can see what the camera is pointing
at.  Keyed images allow the external video to show through the background
color (genlocking) OR the live video to show through every color *but*
the background.

Other software allows direct reads and writes from/to the boards own
registers and memory; viewing of 24 bit or 12 bit pictures; and frame-
grabbing.

Everything works to some extent.  I cannot seem to get the PIP to load
from a CLI without crashing, but it loads fine from the WorkBench (or
the 2.0 wbstartup drawer).  Some of the ARexx commands listed in the
manual are not in the software, or are implemented differently than
stated.  I cannot get the default settings on Frame grabs to save
properly, so I have to reset them every time I boot the machine (via
ARexx).  Frame grabbing PIP just plain doesn't work.

GVP is aware of the problems and has people working on them.  (I know,
I've called them enough times to get on a first-name bases with half
of their staff!)

The IV24 board is a great piece of hardware that has a lot of potential.
Third party support is forthcoming (ASDG will support the IV24 in their
next release of ADPro in November.)  The board *is* a bit pricey, retailing
right around $2,000 with another $50 to $100 for the A2000 adaptor.

Hopefully this will change soon.  Chips & Technologies has introduced a
new chip that handles full PIP in a computer.  The chip is $40 in quantity
compared to $200 - $300 for the sets currently on the market.  Don't
expect cheap competitors until at least 1992, though.