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| Issue 3: BVision PPC Review |
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| Mick Sutton looks at the ultimate A1200 graphics card.
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I have looked on in great envy in the past, when I saw just how good a computer display is with a graphics card. When I bought my A1200 in 1993, I was impressed with the AGA chipset's graphics output, after all - 256 colours on screen all at once was a big improvement over my previous machine the A500+. However, times have moved on and we want more colours, speed, and higher resolutions to feed our appetite for more powerful applications and games. As I have said in an earlier review of the PPC card, one of the main reason for buying the PPC card was that a graphics card was soon to be available for it with much higher specifications than any other graphics cards available for the A1200.
Fitting
The card comes in two parts, one part the graphics card itself, the other the interface board that has a socket to connect to the monitor. The two boards are connected by way of shielded ribbon cable, which allows you to mount the interface board in any type of tower, as long as you have a suitable cut-out.
The PPC card has to be removed from your A1200 to enable you to connect the graphics card to it. The board mounts on a connector that is at right angles to the accelerator edge connector. Then the two boards are firmly held together by two supplied screws, which eliminate any problems with the boards parting company, especially when mounted vertically in a tower. Next the whole assembly has to be fitted to the A1200 motherboard and this requires disconnecting the LED connector and floppy drive cable from the motherboard. Now for the difficult bit, manoeuvering the whole assembly into position so that the accelerator aligns with the A1200 edge connector and the graphics card sits over the motherboard. The LED's can then be reconnected through the hole in the BVision card and the floppy cable can be connected to its header. I then had to find a place to mount the interface card within my tower, and as I did not have a cut out I had to use a blanking plate (not supplied) in one of my tower's slots. Then I connected the two boards with the shielded ribbon.
Software Installation
Once the board is all in place the next step is to install the supplied software that includes CyberGraphX 3, and an upgrade for the PPC flash ROM. Phase 5 recommends that you upgrade the flash ROM before you install CyberGraphX. To install the flash ROM upgrade you have boot your machine whilst holding down the "S" key and both mouse buttons, then when the early start-up menu appears choose the Boot Options button and disable all hard drive partitions. Next boot with no start-up sequence holding the "S" key once again (but not the mouse buttons this time), and the shell window appears. Now insert the supplied floppy and run the flash update program (two versions exist 040, and 060). Boot your machine in the normal manner and install the CyberGraphX software that using standard installer program. During the installation you have to specify the maximum horizontal frequency of your monitor (check the monitor handbook) and a few CyberGraphX options which are explained in the installer help.
Usage
You now have to reboot your Amiga to make the BVision monitor driver active. At this point the workbench is still in the AGA screenmode, so the first thing to do is to choose a new one in the screenmode preferences program that you will notice has many new screenmodes, ranging from 8 bit (256 colours) to 24 bit (16 million colours). Due to the fact that there is no pass-through for AGA screenmodes (the monitor has to be plugged into either the graphics card or the Amiga monitor connector) I had to save my setting and switch of the computer to enable me to connect my monitor to the graphics card. When I switched on my beloved Amiga again I could not believe the difference the card had made... I was in 1024 x 768 16 bit and I could not help noticing how much better it looked than Double PAL Hi Res no flicker 32 colours!
Basically all the applications on my computer were able to use all the offered screenmodes, and some games notably Quake, and more recently Napalm. All applications benefit from higher resolution and speed increases even though they were never written with CyberGraphX in mind. Applications that have specific CyberGraphX support such as Photogenics, IBrowse, Pagestream and most current programs get a huge boost because they can show images in Truecolour (16 Million) and with the BVision there is no noticeable difference in speed between 8 bit and 24 bit - wow! What people do not realise is that when a graphics card is fitted you also get a speed benefit, particularly with serial devices such as modems etc...
Conclusion
The quality of the hardware is faultless, but I was a little disappointed with the supplied manual (if you can call it that) - one sheet of paper, as seems to be the standard these days. The manual is just about adequate in explaining the installation but only has two short paragraphs on usage which in my opinion is just not enough, particularly with newcomers to graphics cards. Fortunately I belong to a user group and had lots of help and advice. Many users invest in a faster processor of one type or another, but few seem as keen to upgrade their Amiga`s graphical capabilities. I tell you now that once you have taken the step to get a graphics card and have used it, you will be thinking to yourself how did I ever manage before.
Results
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Pros
Huge range of screenmodes
Fast in all resoloutions and colour depths
High build quality
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Cons
No pass-through for AGA modes
Minimal documentation
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