Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: hgomez@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Humberto L. Gomez) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Picasso II Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Date: 20 Jan 1994 19:00:59 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 261 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2hmkdb$jb4@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: hgomez@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Humberto L. Gomez) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: hardware, graphics, 24-bit, Zorro II, commercial PRODUCT NAME Picasso II 24bit retargetable graphics board for Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Over the years, there has been much discussion and debate on USENET about the meaning of the term "retargetable graphics" or "RTG". In this review, Humberto Gomez uses the term "RTG" as it is found the Picasso II documentation. Mr. Gomez quotes from their manual: "The term RTG means - No more CHIP RAM BLUES. The Picasso II RTG emulator has been designed so that it uses no Chip RAM for its emulation. Following Commodore WB4.0 guidelines, the Picasso II on-board blitter which supports drawing speeds up to 30 megabytes per second can use the RTG to let programs able themselves to run on the board instead of the ECS graphics or AGA." Mr. Gomez felt strongly about using the term "RTG" in his review, even though its use here may be controversial or disputed, so we agreed to leave the review as-is and put this disclaimer at the top. - Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a 24-bit graphics board that fits inside an Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000. It is RTG (Retargetable Graphics), and it is a Zorro II card. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Village Tronic/ Expert Services Address: 7559 Mall Road Florence, KY 40142 USA Telephone: (606) 371-9690 Fax: (606) 282-5942 LIST PRICE It lists for $599.99 (US). But most places sell it for $449.99 (1 MB version) and $499.99 (2 MB version). SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE At least 2 megs of Fast RAM required. Monitor? Well it really helps if you have a MultiSync monitor if you do not own a 3000. A 3000 uses the deinterlacer and can use all resolutions on a regular SVGA Monitor. You only need one monitor, but it has to be at least SVGA... not RGB. It works on a 68000, but a faster processor is recommended. SOFTWARE AmigaDOS 1.3 or higher. Works with AmigaDOS 2.0 and 3.0. Under 3.0 I have experienced some problems. Screen dragging jerks, and then also the pointer sometimes gets stuck on the menus. A call to the company verified some problems with 3.0 screen drawing routines, and the company is working to correct the problem. These 3.0 problems are very minimal and due to software, not hardware. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000, 2 megs Chip RAM, 4 megs Fast RAM 250 meg hard drive. AmigaDOS 2.0 and 3.0. INSTALLATION The board installs in an Amiga Zorro slot. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: If you are not comfortable opening up your Amiga, then you should have the work done by an authorized Amiga service center. Opening your Amiga yourself may void your warranty, and careless work may even damage the machine. - Dan] The software installs using the Commodore Installer utility. It is very easy to do. REVIEW I am very happy with this board. First of all, it fits into a Zorro II or Zorro III slot. The board itself is Zorro II. The back of the board contains two 15-pin jacks. One of these is for the Amiga output that goes into the card. The other is for a cable (supplied) going from the card to the monitor. Requiring only one monitor, the card auto-switches between its display modes and the Amiga's. This switching is transparent to the user. You just use the Amiga as you would normally do. If an Amiga screen is in the front and a Picasso screen in the back, then you just use the screen depth gadget as usual, and the board switches to the Picasso screen. All Picasso resolutions are available to all programs that let you select a screen mode. For those programs that don't let you select a screen mode, then the Picasso includes a Change Screen Commodity that goes into the WBStartup drawer (AmigaDOS 2.0 and higher). This commodity pops up every time a program is used that does not use a Picasso resolution. The commodity gives you the ability to select a Picasso screen for the program to use. This is useful for ASDG's Art Department Professional (ADPro) and other programs that always appear in lo-res. ADPro savers are included, along with other graphic programs so that you can save your images to the Picasso II board for immediate displaying in any of the resolutions. Resolutions include 640x400 with 16 million colors, 800x600 with 16 million colors (with 2 megs installed), 1280x1024 with 256 colors, and many others. Anything higher than 800x600 may be displayed with 256 colors. But I noticed in ADPro, all of these resoltuions had the ability to display 64,000 colors with no problem. Many intermediate resolutions are also available. IMPORTANT AmigaDOS 3.0 is required to select resolutions that have more than 16 colors. If you do not have 3.0 ,then this board will only give you the ability to display up to 16 colors for your programs, unless it is a graphic program that can dump the image directly to the board like ADPro. But ProPage, DPaint IV, and all other programs that let you select screen modes will give you only up to 16 colors in the resolutions supplied. ADDED BONUS The Picasso turns your pointer into a professional hi-res pointer. Actually your pointer will reflect the resolution that you select. So if you select 800x600, then your pointer resizes for that resolution. LIKES AND DISLIKES ('+' means like, '-' means dislike) + I like the ability to use my Amiga programs using the Picasso II board resolutions. Under AmigaDOS 3.0, I opened up a 256-color ProPage screen at 1280x1024, and it displayed all pictures with their colors correctly. Very impressive. + You can choose the colors using the Palette Preferences program supplied by Commodore and see all the colors swirl. + Includes a 24-bit screen blanker that draws lines in 16.8 million colors. + The autoswitch feature is really nice. + It uses the Picasso memory for displaying Picasso screens, leaving all of your Chip RAM alone. + It includes TV PAINT JR. Graphic viewers are included for display GIF, IFF, MPEG, and JPEG pictures using the Picasso board. - Minor problems with the screens in 3.0. They wont drag correctly and the pointer sometimes gets stuck at the menus. - The manual is not user-friendly. Information is not very clear and it does not explain things very well. It looks like it is photocopied, not professional. - Some of the programs supplied are in German, not English. - It requires AmigaDOS 3.0 to select more than 16 colors in the resolutions for programs such as ProPage, DPaint, and others. - TV Paint JR always says it does not have enough memory for UNDO buffer, even if you install a full two megs on the board. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: I suspect that TV Paint Jr. is limited by the amount of RAM in the Amiga, not just on the Picasso board. - Dan] COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS GVP's EGS Spectrum ranks slightly higher in my book. Although this board is very hard to find with 1 meg on it, the full two megs gives you higher resolutions than the Picasso II board does. It also autosenses whether you have a ZorroII or Zorro III machine and uses whichever one your machine has for better throughput. No problems with AmigaDOS 3.0 experienced yet with this board. Besides that, the boards compare well. They both autoswitch, and they both are RTG. But in my opinion, the EGS is a better board than the Picasso. But the EGS Spectrum is also more expensive. BUGS Already mentioned. Mostly due to software. The company is working on an update of its libraries to let them function correctly under AmigaDOS 3.0. VENDOR SUPPORT Although friendly with regards to my question, they seemed unknowledgeable. I asked what advantages are there to having 2 megs on the board and they just did not know. They did not know of specific AmigaDOS 3.0 problems, just that there were some. The board packaging also shows an AmigaDOS 3.0 A3000 Workbench screen with 256 color pictures, but the representative I spoke with said that 3.0 is not fully supported. WARRANTY Depends where you buy it. 30 days from my sales firm, 1 year from the company. CONCLUSIONS If you can afford the EGS Spectrum, then buy that board. But if you can't then the Picasso II will take you beyond AGA graphics to workstation resolutions at a minimal price. It performs fairly well, and updates of the software are planned so that the bugs with AmigaDOS 3.0 will be resolved. An Amiga with a Picasso II outdoes any SVGA 80486's that I have ever seen. It outdoes an Amiga 4000 in graphics capabilities, and all the screens can use the Picasso II board . It is a very good, highly impressive product. It is a must to own one if you want to get out of the old age of Amiga display capabilities and go forth to the higher, faster, more-color resolutions of the future and today. RATING SCALE GVP Spectrum: 9.5 out of 10 Picasso II: 8.5 out of 10 COPYRIGHT NOTICE The opinions of this review are solely mine based on the performance of the products mentioned. Everyone is free to make their own opinions and compare this review. This is a public domain review. Humberto L. Gomez hgomez@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews