From: chris@tornado.pair.com (Chris Coulson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Micronik "Scandy" internal scan doubler Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Date: 17 Sep 1998 10:44:45 -0400 Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 299 Sender: barrett@belvedere.cs.umass.edu Message-ID: <6tr78t$1m0@belvedere.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: chris@tornado.pair.com (Chris Coulson) Keywords: hardware, scan doubler, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1998 Number 5 NNTP-Posting-Host: belvedere.cs.umass.edu X-NNTP-Posting-Host: belvedere.cs.umass.edu Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!not-for-mail PRODUCT NAME Micronik "Scandy" Internal Scandoubler, revision 1.3 BRIEF DESCRIPTION A scandoubler card for any Amiga with a video slot. Does not include a flicker-fixer, interlaced screens will be scandoubled but remain interlaced. Only doubles 15KHz modes, all others are passed through untouched. COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Micronik Computer-Service Address: unknown Telephone: unknown FAX: unknown E-mail: unknown World Wide Web: unknown Yes, you've got it, Micronik fail to provide ANY sort of contact information with the card. No address, no phone numbers, no fax, no email, nothing. This is, however, a minor irritation compared to things I'll get onto in later sections... LIST PRICE 69.95 Pounds Sterling SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Video slot Monitor with a standard VGA DB-15 connector and support for 31KHz modes (i.e. any "PC" monitor) SOFTWARE None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 4000/060, 2MB Chip RAM, 64MB Fast RAM Microvitec 1438 14" multiscan monitor (15-40KHz) CTX 1785S 17" multiscan monitor (30-85KHz) Cybervision64 graphics card AmigaDOS 3.1 INSTALLATION Assuming that we've already stripped down the host Amiga, so that the video slot is ready and waiting to accept the card: Opening the box, we find the card wrapped up in bubblewrap, and a backplate with DB-15 cutout rattling around loose. Logically then, the first task is to undo the bolts on the VGA connector on the card, poke the connector through the cutout on the backplate, then tighten the bolts to hold the plate and card together. This done, we slide the card into position, which is a bit tricky given that on the A4000, the video slot is right next to the motherboard, and since the scandoubler is a pretty small card, there isn't much to get hold of when trying to shove it into position, or much space between card and motherboard for the average sized finger to slip. But anyway, the card is lined up and ready to be shoved firmly into place. Ah, first problem spotted. The backplate Micronik supply is painted in a rather heavy pale cream paint (similar in texture to the stuff used to paint the A4000 casing itself). And since the paint is so heavy, the combined thickness of metal and paint on the narrow end of the backplate (opposite end to the right angled mounting bracket) is too wide to slot into the cutout in the A4000 casing... Take the card back out, grab a file and spend a few minutes smoothing down the tab until it fits the slot. OK, problem solved, though I wonder why Micronik felt the need to slap paint all over the thing in the first place - what's wrong with a nice standard bare metal finish? Nobody will see the plate once it's in place, so who cares whether it's colour-coordinated or not. And that paint isn't free either... But anyway, now that's sorted out, surely the card installation will now go smoothly. If only. Because now that the tab fits into the slot just fine, we realise that with the backplate pushed in as far as it'll go, the edge connector fingers on the card itself aren't actually making contact with the video slot connectors. Guess what, that lovely DB-15 sized cutout on the backplate is in the wrong place, making it completely useless. So, not only are we paying extra for the dubious privilege of getting a colour-coordinated plate, we're paying for one that doesn't even fit the computer it's designed for!!! By this point, I think that if a Micronik employee had walked into the room, I'd have killed them. So, I've got 2 choices. Either leave the plate off and be extra careful when plugging the VGA cable in not to bend the card too much, or dig through my box of spares to see if I've got a suitable backplate lying around. Fortunately, I did. It's not perfect, because it's actually a DB-23 cutout, but at least it's in the right position. And it's also plain metal, so it fits like a glove. I suppose one other option would have been to cut out a suitable hole in the blank backplate that was removed from the A4000, but that requires tools I don't have. Anyway, now that the card is attached to a backplate that fits the A4000, it's finally pushed firmly into place in the video slot. The Cybervision pass-through cable is moved from the RGB port to the VGA port on the scandoubler, and that's it, installation FINALLY completed. DOCUMENTATION Oh dear. Oh dearie me. This is actually the first black mark against the scandoubler, as the "documentation" is the first thing you notice, or not, when you open the box. Quite simply, the documentation consists of, wait for it, a single piece of A5 paper, with German instructions on one side and, umm, more German instructions on the other side... And that's it. So, if you can't read German, then tough. Tough indeed if you've got an A2000 or A3000, because there's a specific section of the instructions that mentions something about these two Amigas. But as I can't read German, I have no idea what it's about. It could be saying anything, from congratulating A3000 owners for having such good taste, to warning them that plugging the card into their Amiga will fry every last component on the motherboard. It could be either, it's more likely something completely different, but unless you can read German, or know a friendly translator, take care if you own an A2/3000... Fact is, although Micronik are a German company, there is simply NO EXCUSE for supplying products outside Germany without at least an English translation of the instructions, and preferably more languages besides. To provide nothing but German text is wrong. Other German companies manage to give us bi/multi-lingual instructions, why not Micronik? And before you ask, no I didn't buy the card directly from Germany, it was supplied by a UK-based firm. So if Micronik do have English documentation available, I'd have expected to get it... REVIEW I'll ignore the major problems with installation and documentation here, and simply concentrate on how the card performs once setup. First of all, it's totally transparent to the system. There's no software patches to be run, no alterations to the existing hardware to be made, nothing. You just continue using your existing 15KHz screenmodes as before, but now you get to use them on a 31KHz monitor, without the ugly black scanlines. AMOS screens have never looked so solid :-) It scandoubles ALL 15KHz screens, both interlaced and non-interlaced. However, it won't touch anything else, which means that Super72 screens may not be viewable - they're 24KHz, which most VGA/SVGA monitors can't display. Scandoubled screens are shifted way over to the left, which means that on my M1438, I have to turn the horizontal shift control as far to the right as possible, and even then the screens aren't quite centred. However, screen positioning isn't one of the 1438's strong areas, and on the CTX1785, all screens can be positioned and sized beautifully, so if you're thinking about getting a decent monitor to use with the scandoubler, then you shouldn't have any trouble here. Scandoubled screens are considerably brighter than those generated by my CV64, so switching from scandoubled screens to CV64 screens, or vice versa, requires adjustments to be made to the brightness and/or contrast settings on the monitor. Whether this difference in brightness is just related to the CV64, or whether it is the same on all graphics cards, I don't know. The black scanlines that plagued all 15KHz modes are gone, completely. Areas of colour now look like solid areas, rather than strips of colour with black gaps between them. This is, perhaps, why the screens look brighter, though I suspect there is still some additional boosting of brightness due to the card. Also, the well-known AGA banding problem is no longer apparent, which is handy because with DB-15 sockets all-round now, I'm no longer using the Commodore silver blob 23-15 adaptor, which is where I added the resistor to fix the banding originally... Testing it with a variety of applications and games, none of which will promote to either a native 31KHz mode (like DblPAL) or a Cybervision mode, showed no problems. Remember, as far as the system is concerned, nothing has changed. Software continues to open standard AGA/ECS screenmodes, which the hardware then generates and passes to the video slot, at which point the scandoubler takes over. So this is one of the few upgrades you can do to an Amiga that is guaranteed NOT to cause software to break - if it already works on your current setup, it'll still work after the scandoubler is installed. Nice :-) LIKES It works as advertised, and the PCB build quality is good, with no obvious last minute hacks. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS The documentation is, to at least half the Amiga users in the world, totally useless and needs to be rewritten IN ENGLISH as soon as possible. The backplate needs replacing, so that a) it's supplied with just a plain metal finish and b) so that the cutout is in the right place. If possible, it would be nice to get the scandoubled screens shifted across to the right, without having to use the monitor controls. Also, if Super72 screens were scandoubled, then all you'd need to see them would be a monitor capable of displaying 48KHz screens, which covers pretty much every SVGA monitor on the planet... Leaving them at 24KHz is fine if your monitor scans that low, but most don't. Whoever at Amiga Int. decided this product was worthy of an official seal of approval should be hit several times about the head with a variety of wet fish, until they realise what a monumentally huge blunder they made. Any product that isn't immediately compatible with the Amiga it was designed for certainly doesn't deserve any sort of approval, least of all from Amiga Int... And whilst we've still got the fish handy, give the Micronik team a good thumping as well, because they should have spotted these problems long before the unit ever went into mass-production. They DID test it with an A4000, didn't they??? BUGS Unreadable documentation and a backplate that both fails to fit the A4000 properly and has the cutout in the wrong place. But the circuitry itself seems to work perfectly. WARRANTY Since I can't read the documentation, I have no idea whether there is any warranty at all, let alone what the terms may be. CONCLUSIONS Once installed, it does work well, and I do like the solid look I now get with all the 15KHz screens I still have to use. Given that Commodore goofed in the first place by not including a scandoubler in the A4000, this is a good and reasonably priced alternative. However, I simply cannot believe the lack of decent international documentation, the complete lack of company contact details, and most of all the backplate problems - the overthick paint is one thing (perhaps Micronik's test A4000 has slightly wider slots than mine), but the misaligned cutout is inexcusable. In short, thumbs up to the designer of the electronics, but thumbs down all round to everyone else concerned with this product. Micronik, you can, should and MUST do better than this. I really wish I'd paid the extra 5 pounds and bought the external unit that simply plugs into the RGB port, even though that goes against the big box philosophy of putting everything inside the case. But when an internal solution is as badly put together as this, philosophy can go hide in the corner. Scores out of 10: Based purely on performance once installed - 8 Based on the product as a whole - 2 I feel bad about being so negative, because Micronik are at least making an effort to support big box Amigas specifically. But really, with support like this, I wonder if the Amiga needs enemies... COPYRIGHT NOTICE Written by Chris Coulson (chris@tornado.pair.com). Freely distributable and reusable. Just drop me an email to let me know if it ends up being used anywhere interesting :-) -- At Home With the Chris Amigas, Babylon 5, Flight Sims, RIAT'97-98 and Melanie C http://www.tornado.pair.com/ --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator 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 Web site: http://math.uh.edu/~barrett/reviews.html