MacPicasso 340 NUBUS Card - Mac 68k Drivers

[dir_marillion]

Hello,

I have a MacPicasso 340 NUBUS Card and I am searching for the 68k drivers.

Thanks

 

[Unknown_K]

http://www.villagetronic.com/classics/download.html

The files are listed under MP340

 

[TylerEss]

mmmm. Wish I had one of those cards. SGRAM on NuBus FTW.

 

[tmtomh]

dir_marillion, Unknown_K has provided the correct link. But if you have any trouble accessing the files, I have the drivers myself and could get them to you.

Best,

Matt

 

[igor_av]

dir_marillion, Unknown_K has provided the correct link. But if you have any trouble accessing the files, I have the drivers myself and could get them to you.

Have you tried the MacPicasso 340 in a 68k mac? Do the drivers provide 2D and quicktime acceleration?

 

[kreats]

Most of the nice features of the card only work in PPC mode unfortunately.

 

[dir_marillion]

Thank you all for the Link and your will to send me the files. Mac 68k scene is alive and Rulezz !!!

Result: None of the drivers (extensions, control panels) are working with my Quadra 950 and MacOS 8.1. After the second boot I have many different resolutions, probably from the BIOS of the Card. No Quicktime acceleration.

The only advantage it's the 4MB RAM and the higher resolutions.

Maybe the card is awesome for PPCs.

It is a Gift for my Quadra [] ]'>

 

[Maccess]

Umm you'll probably get better performance if you can find a Radius PrecisionColor/PrecisionColorPro/LeMans (LeMans is the best), or a Radius/RasterOps Thunder IV. These cards have good 68K drivers.

The significance of the MacPicasso is that they're the only cards for Nubus PPC Macs with 3D acceleration. Still, the AV/HPV cards of Nubus PPC (33/40Mhz clocks vs. 10Mhz in Nubus) are faster than any Nubus Video Cards for 2D performance.

 

[TylerEss]

I'm fairly certain that the MP340 actually doesn't do any 3d accel, only 2d and QuickTime.

The only 3d accelerated NuBus card was a prototype card (RenderPix) from NewerTech that was never released, as far as I know. Can anyone verify that?

 

[trag]

Umm you'll probably get better performance if you can find a Radius PrecisionColor/PrecisionColorPro/LeMans (LeMans is the best), or a Radius/RasterOps Thunder IV. These cards have good 68K drivers.
The significance of the MacPicasso is that they're the only cards for Nubus PPC Macs with 3D acceleration. Still, the AV/HPV cards of Nubus PPC (33/40Mhz clocks vs. 10Mhz in Nubus) are faster than any Nubus Video Cards for 2D performance.

Kaye (of MacGurus last time I checked) and I did some testing way back when and posted the results on the PowerWatch forums (which are gone). Our tests were performed in PPC NuBus Macs. Our results were that the MacPicasso and Radius Thunder IV GX (1152, 1360, 1600 and Thunder 24/GT) were pretty much tied as fastest NuBus video card available, BUT they were tops in different categories of MacBench. Also, while they beat out the Apple HPV card in a few categories, by and large the HPV card (goes in the PDS slot) provides the very best video performance on NuBus PPC Macs. The AV card is significantly slower than the HPV card.

So, for your first monitor, make sure your PPC NuBus Mac has an HPV card. If you need another monitor, add a MacPicasso or a Radius Thunder IV GX.

 

[TylerEss]

+1 use the HPV.

It's an unaccelerated dumb framebuffer (as opposed to the sophisticated accelerated graphics subsystem the T-IV card is) but it's got a 40MHz 128-bit bus leading directly into it's VRAM.

For 2d blitting performance, (almost) no acceleration will ever make up for the difference between a 40MHz 128-bit bus and a 20MHz 32-bit bus. It's the difference between 75MB/s and 600MB/s (approximate absolute peak bandwidth)

 

[Unknown_K]

What about GWORLD equipped cards that can load a whole image into GWORLD RAM and when you pan around the card grabs the section needed from RAM and not the HD through the Nubus interface?

I kind of wonder why Apple let GWORLD die out, seemed like a cool idea to me.

 

[kreats]

I did some testing the other day with a macpicasso 340 and the onboard q950 video smoked it in benchmarks. Unless you want photoshop acceleration or driver features I don't think there's much point.

btw trag - got your benchmarks still handy (or have an appropriate wayback machine link?). The nubus video roundup on lowendmac is quite antiquated.