slomacuser
Well-known member
I can't find any info or drivers for this card. It was taken from Quadra 650. How much faster is PDS than NuBus?
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Miro Rainbow GX PDS graphic card
- Thread starter slomacuser
- Start date
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
PDS is far faster than NuBus. 33MHz system bus of that Q650 vs.10MHz of vanilla NuBus, dunno about NuBus90 offhand. Are those S-Video connectors? Looks like it might be for VidCap. Run TattleTech to find out the "Type" of the card.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=video+capture+PDS+macintosh+miro+rainbow&t=hz&ia=web
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Systems
https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/categories/202536578-Pinnacle
See if TattleTech comes up with Miro DC-10 or DC-20. The DC-30+ appears to have been a PCI version.
edit: Miro Computer Systems GmbH
The miroVIDEO PCTV - 1997 PCI Card User's Guide might give you a notion of where they were in 1993 by where they were heading?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Miro%22+Computer+Systems+GmbH&norw=1&t=hz&ia=web
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Systems
https://support.corel.com/hc/en-us/categories/202536578-Pinnacle
See if TattleTech comes up with Miro DC-10 or DC-20. The DC-30+ appears to have been a PCI version.
edit: Miro Computer Systems GmbH
The miroVIDEO PCTV - 1997 PCI Card User's Guide might give you a notion of where they were in 1993 by where they were heading?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Miro%22+Computer+Systems+GmbH&norw=1&t=hz&ia=web
Last edited by a moderator:
slomacuser
Well-known member
Yes this is video capture card (S-Video connectors), there were no drivers on HD, probablly someone reinstalled or replaced the HD without knowing for drivers.
Bolle
Well-known member
slomacuser was so kind to send that card to me:
I popped it into my Q950 and threw various drivers at it to see what happens.
The Prisma16 driver floating around the web does nothing.
I could source a few more drivers from the guy who is running http://www.mirosupport.de (Thanks Maik
)
He had drivers for the Chroma, Chroma1152GT, Prisma2, Prisma1152GX and the control panels for various CRTs miro made.
All those did not do anything for my card though besides the miroDESKTOP control panel would allow me to change color depth using shortcuts just like the Radius desktop CP (the CP looks to be exactly the same besides it has all Radius references replaced with miro - I have another miro Nubus card which is a rebranded Radius card so this would make some sense at least)
I checked my own archive for everything miro related and could actually find Monitors CP extensions for the card. Why didn't I check my own stuff at first? :evil:
The extension enables some additional options in the Monitors CP:
A bit hard to read but the card can go up to 1408x1024 and I would guess it does that at 24bit color as well.
Notice the TV option on the left. So one of the additional ports must indeed an S-Video port to output video to a TV. I will have to test this later on.
The second port that looks like S-Video is a serial port. Some miro CRTs had serial ports to be controlled by the control panels I mentioned above.
In the control panel you could choose where your CRT is connected:
You could also connect the monitor to the modem or printer port but could as well use the one on the graphics card.
As I do not have a miro CRT I can not go any further from there.
I benchmarked the card against my Q950s built in video and it comes out nearly the same. Speedometer 4.02 QuickDraw benchmark at 16bit color comes in with a 1.226 for the miro card and 1.270 for the onboard video. (a Thunder IV scores 0.538 at that test according to the old benchmarks at LEM, now how does that sound? :evil: )
So the card has acceleration built into its driver in the ROM as none of the above miroACCEL CPs were installed when running the benchmark (they did not load anyways even when installed as they just were not the correct ones for the RainbowGX)
With one of the ports being S-Video output and the other one being a serial port this card also can not do video capture. It is pretty damn nice to connect a second screen which will be nearly as fast as the onboard video. You can't do that with Nubus cards.
I popped it into my Q950 and threw various drivers at it to see what happens.
The Prisma16 driver floating around the web does nothing.
I could source a few more drivers from the guy who is running http://www.mirosupport.de (Thanks Maik
)He had drivers for the Chroma, Chroma1152GT, Prisma2, Prisma1152GX and the control panels for various CRTs miro made.
All those did not do anything for my card though besides the miroDESKTOP control panel would allow me to change color depth using shortcuts just like the Radius desktop CP (the CP looks to be exactly the same besides it has all Radius references replaced with miro - I have another miro Nubus card which is a rebranded Radius card so this would make some sense at least)
I checked my own archive for everything miro related and could actually find Monitors CP extensions for the card. Why didn't I check my own stuff at first? :evil:
The extension enables some additional options in the Monitors CP:
A bit hard to read but the card can go up to 1408x1024 and I would guess it does that at 24bit color as well.
Notice the TV option on the left. So one of the additional ports must indeed an S-Video port to output video to a TV. I will have to test this later on.
The second port that looks like S-Video is a serial port. Some miro CRTs had serial ports to be controlled by the control panels I mentioned above.
In the control panel you could choose where your CRT is connected:
You could also connect the monitor to the modem or printer port but could as well use the one on the graphics card.
As I do not have a miro CRT I can not go any further from there.
I benchmarked the card against my Q950s built in video and it comes out nearly the same. Speedometer 4.02 QuickDraw benchmark at 16bit color comes in with a 1.226 for the miro card and 1.270 for the onboard video. (a Thunder IV scores 0.538 at that test according to the old benchmarks at LEM, now how does that sound? :evil: )
So the card has acceleration built into its driver in the ROM as none of the above miroACCEL CPs were installed when running the benchmark (they did not load anyways even when installed as they just were not the correct ones for the RainbowGX)
With one of the ports being S-Video output and the other one being a serial port this card also can not do video capture. It is pretty damn nice to connect a second screen which will be nearly as fast as the onboard video. You can't do that with Nubus cards.
Last edited by a moderator:
slomacuser
Well-known member
that is some interesting research if you would be so informational at first time I might not sell this card ;-p
if you would be so informational at first time I might not sell this card ;-p
Bolle
Well-known member
For reference and because there has been activity on that card in another thread, here are the Monitors CP extension files:
View attachment miroGX.sit.hqx
View attachment miroGX.sit.hqx
lokster123
Member
Hi everyone! I also ended up with a miro PDS video card (Rainbow v1.6) inside of a Quadra 700. I was not able to get video out of it (yet), so I also reached out to Maik (awesome guy, got back to me right away) and he sent me all of his Mac drivers. He said it was ok to share them so I have attached them here. He also sent some miro marketing materials which includes spec sheets of various cards, but the zip file is too big to attach so I will include them in a followup post once I get a chance to try the drivers out.
Big thank you to @Bolle for connecting us with Maik.
Here is a link to my original Reddit post. I will make the followup post to both 68kMLA and Reddit.
Big thank you to @Bolle for connecting us with Maik.
Here is a link to my original Reddit post. I will make the followup post to both 68kMLA and Reddit.
zeppelin87
Member
Hi there,
Did you manage to get it to work? I also have a Rainbow Q card (version 1.7, dated Sept 01.1993). Please share if you manage to get a picture out of it. Thank you!
-- Z
lokster123
Member
Haven’t had any luck on my end. It might require a special control panel but the hard drive in the machine had either been replaced or erased (was not the factory drive). Any leads on your end?
zeppelin87
Member
No, basically same as you. I have tried some of the extensions in the zip file, but no luck. My Quadra 950 was not wiped when I bough it - had a lot of previous owner data on it (from 1995 to 2001!!) - but nothing related to the card. So it seems that the previous owner did not even use it. Oh well. At least it is a nice paperweight
You could try the 'Slots' binary from https://staticky.com/mirrors/ftp.ap..._Chest/Devices_-_Hardware/NuBus_Slot_Manager/. It will hopefully show you the content of the declaration Rom of the card - not sure if it will work for PDS in addition to NuBus, but if it's a pseudo-slot design there's a good chance.
If there's no valid declaration Rom, without the proper SW, it's a paperweight. But even if 'Slots' doesn't work, it's still possible to dump the area where the Rom should be, it might be present but corrupted somehow (broken trace on the board, ...).
If there's no valid declaration Rom, without the proper SW, it's a paperweight. But even if 'Slots' doesn't work, it's still possible to dump the area where the Rom should be, it might be present but corrupted somehow (broken trace on the board, ...).
cheesestraws
Well-known member
Slots definitely works for pseudoslot PDS cards, it's what I use for general poking of stuff.
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