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Rasterops Accelerator

slomacuser

Well-known member
Thanks to @NeshireChoir I finally got the Rasterops Accelerator a 12" NuBus card. Looks like Rasterops made 2 versions, I and II in the same year (1990). I have version I and found quickly what was wrong with version I. It was not designed to be put into compact Mac II like IIcx or IIci. The top cover can't be closed, only if you cut/breake the clip that holds the NuBus cards when the lid is closed. (See bent chip from top left side on picture below). I have filled the card with 4x 30 pin 4 MB SIMMs.

AcceleratorI.png
Rasterops Accelerator I (pic /ilike8bits.com)

I did a quick test on Macintosh IIci, 64k cache card, unaccelerated Rasterops 24STV video capture card, Rasterops Accelerator (50% memory was reserved for GWorld and 50% for RAM disk), 13" 640 x 480 Monitor with Norton Utilities. Good thing is you can switch ON or OFF the Accelerator without rebooting.


Graph.jpg


Accelerator does help, not as advertised (see picture below) but still slower than Mac IIci built-in video which is around 25 points and more.

TNM_RasterOps_color_display_systems_and_video_pro_20170830_0126-4.jpg

And picture of Accelerator II from wiki.preterhuman.net

AcceleratorII.jpg
 

Melkhior

Well-known member
Oh, lovely piece of kit. I didn't remember 'pure' accelerator without a video output.

Can you point out the piece(s) of software you need to get those to accelerate QD & GWorlds? I wonder how complicated it would be to replicate (most other boards don't make clear what they accelerate, but here it's clearly putting GWorlds in the dedicated memory).
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Exactly, no matter how well "Accelerated" no NuBus VidCard will ever best a built-in-Video subsystem. They're not for the same use case. After the IIci was introduced with Video on the processor bus, the realm of Video in the Macintosh II changed forever.

What is notable is that Apple didn't waste a slot (interrupt) for built-in-video in the Wicked Fast IIfx. IIfx was meant for much higher end use cases than the IIci with its rudimentary, if faster, video capabilities.

IIfx was introduced with a hot new NuBus VidCard that had its own output and did the same NuBus Block Transfer Acceleration magic as the RasterOps board.
 
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Unknown_K

Well-known member
The Rasterops cards are nice to have on older systems like the Mac II and IIx where you use older graphics cards without acceleration.

I think I have 2 of the cards you have pictured. You can use the 16MB (max) RAM as a very fast scratch file or half and half with Gworld.
 

bakkus

Well-known member
Exactly, no matter how well "Accelerated" no NuBus VidCard will ever best a built-in-Video subsystem. They're not for the same use case. After the IIci was introduced with Video on the processor bus, the realm of Video in the Macintosh II changed forever.

What is notable is that Apple didn't waste a slot (interrupt) for built-in-video in the Wicked Fast IIfx. IIfx was meant for much higher end use cases than the IIci with its rudimentary, if faster, video capabilities.

IIfx was introduced with a hot new NuBus VidCard that had its own output and did the same NuBus Block Transfer Acceleration magic as the RasterOps board.
What are the best VidCards to use in a IIfx in your opinion?
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
What are the best VidCards to use in a IIfx in your opinion?
Depends on what your use case would be. If you are a graphic designer, video editor, or do film scanning, or anything that needs lots of colors, a higher end card such as any of the 24 bit cards would be best. If you are just gaming and don't care about colors, and want the fastest card possible, I think any of the mid range 8 bit and up cards would be okay.

The "king" would probably be a SuperMac Thunder II GX, or one of the other brand ones. Well, actually, there may be a modern "best" card in the works too, but it isn't ready yet.
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
Supermac Thunder/24's are what I use in my IIfx's but it really depends on the monitor you are using and color depth/resolution.

A 1 MB card would be fine at 640x480.

Apples top end card for 030 machines (IIfx in particular) is the 8.24 GC.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
What are the best VidCards to use in a IIfx in your opinion?
The 8.24 GC was specifically developed for release with the IIfx, so that would be historically accurate, especially paired with a non-accelerated card from Apple's stable. In the pet IIfx, I keep one of my Little Red Radius PixelRockets for running 1152x870 in 24bit on the big Radius PrecisionView 2150 and anything else I want to throw in there for playtime on the secondary 21" Color TPD sitting next to the PrecisionView.

That's probably overkill and definitely not period correct, but I have this thing for millions of pixels in millions of colors.🤪
 

slomacuser

Well-known member
I have found picture when I tested Thunder II GX card in Q700. The Thunder card was faster than built-in video.
8E3C669A-843C-45D5-A3B5-3B570210E1B5.jpeg
 

bakkus

Well-known member
The 8.24 GC was specifically developed for release with the IIfx, so that would be historically accurate, especially paired with a non-accelerated card from Apple's stable. In the pet IIfx, I keep one of my Little Red Radius PixelRockets for running 1152x870 in 24bit on the big Radius PrecisionView 2150 and anything else I want to throw in there for playtime on the secondary 21" Color TPD sitting next to the PrecisionView.

That's probably overkill and definitely not period correct, but I have this thing for millions of pixels in millions of colors.🤪
I've seen those Radius cards on various auction sites for blood diamond money. Gotta win the lottery first ;)
 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
The 8.24GC is one of the Nubus cards I would have liked to own but they seemed over priced a decade ago and have gone up quite a bit since then. They are only really decent in an 030 anyway.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
I've seen those Radius cards on various auction sites for blood diamond money. Gotta win the lottery first ;)
Really? I thought it was only their Thunder GX series that commanded blood diamond tears? Got my GX1600 for a song because it was mis-listed as a far more pedestrian Radius VidCard. 😁

@Unknown_K I think that card is only worthwhile as part of a 1990 dreamboat IIfx setup.

@slomacuser I'd want to find out exactly what "Overall Video Rating" would be defined as in that testing suite before concluding any NuBus VidCard was "faster" than Q700 or most any other Local Bus Video System. That's what Macintosh PDS VidCards and built-in-video amounted to, a precursor to ISA local bus technology. We had it first! ;)
 
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