-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- PRODUCT NAME Pixel64 Graphics Board 2MB + AteoBus BRIEF DESCRIPTION A 24-bit graphics board and proprietry expansion bus for Amiga A1200's fitted into a tower. COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Ateo Concepts Address: Le Plessis 44330 - Coueron FRANCE Distribution in the U.K. via White Knight. LIST PRICE Pixel64 With AteoBus £199.00 SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Amiga 12000, fitted inside a tower. An accelerator board compatible with the AteoBus: eg. Blizzard 1230 MkIII/IV, 1240 MkIV, 1260 MkIV etc. 4Mb or more of FAST RAM. As the supplied software includes the Piccasso96 RTG software you'd be advised to check you meet the minimum requirements for that too. Hardware incompatibilities reported with all M-TEC accelerators, Blizzard 1220, 1230 MkII and Apollo 1230 MkII. SOFTWARE Kickstart/Workbench 3.0 or greater is required. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING A1200 Rev.1D4 with 2 MB Chip RAM. 1.3GB 2.5" Hitachi Hard drive attached to the Motherboard IDE header. Phase 5 Blizzard 1260 Mk IV with 48MB FAST RAM with SCSI kit connected to a 2x CD-ROM and a 520MB Hard drive. Kickstart 40.68, Workbench 40.42 (Version 3.1) Amiga M1438S Doublescan monitor. All fitted inside an A1200 Ateo Concepts Tower. Several tools running (MCP, MousoMeter, NewIcons and ToolsDaemon). WHAT'S IN THE PACKAGE ? 1 adaptor board with a cable attached. This is a small board that attaches to the A1200 expansion slot. It has a long cable attached that is a -12v bypass lead. 1 bus board with 4 slots. This is the business end, this has 4 ISA-like slots which allow you to add, not only the Pixel64, but ethernet cards, SCSI cards, High speed serial/parallel cards and soon a sound card. 1 controller with two ribbon cables attached. This is where all the complicated electronics live that turn the trapdoorsignals into busboard signals, the two ribbon cables carry all this info down into the busboard. A new trapdoor slot is on here to allow you to reattach your A1200 accelerator card. 1 Pixel64 graphics board. 5 sticky pads. 1 power splitter. 1 install disk. Includes StartAteoBus, (licenced) Picasso96 Software and a Mode Promotion utility. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS AteoBus: 9.3Mb/s Bus (Faster than Zorro II) Proprietry bus system, bus has ISA compliant modes too. 12 IRQ masking levels available. No DMA. Pixel64: Cirrus Logic GD5434 (64 bit) Chipset. 135MHz max. pixel clock 2Mb of Video Memory DPMS Compliant SUB-D 15 female high density standard SVGA output Working Resolutions: 320x240 in 8, 16, 24, 32(alpha) bits. 640x480 in 8, 16, 24, 32(alpha) bits. 800x600 in 8, 16, 24, 32(alpha) bits. 1024x768 (interlaced) in 8 and 16 bits. 1120x832 (interlaced) in 8 and 16 bits. 1152x900 (interlaced) in 8 bits. 1280x1024 (interlaced) in 8 bits. *1600x1200 (interlaced) in 8 bits. * Not mentioned in the documentation but I have got it working here on my set-up. It's way too small and flickery to use on a 14" monitor, but might be okay on a 17", 19" or a 21". Anyway, the board does it anyhow!! INSTALLATION The installation of the hardware into the Ateo Tower was fairly simple. The manual is quite badly translated (from French?) but one can usually work out what they want you to do. To be honest, just looking at the boards for a minute-or-two will usually tell you what you're supposed to plug it into anyhow. First you are required to strip the insides of your tower out so that there is a minimum of things in the way. All the ribbons and power supply wires to your peripherals WILL get in the way. The BusBoard is then put in position on the base of the tower using the 5 sticky pads to fix it in place. It is useful to put the Pixel64 board into the BusBoard, for the short term, to facilitate lining up the BusBoard with the rear tower case cut-outs. Next all the ribbons connecting the busboard to the controller are plugged in and the controller is plugged directly into the adaptor board. The Adaptor board, and everything else attached to it, is then plugged into the A1200 trapdoor edge-connector. The next step is connecting up all the power connectors: There's the PC power supply P8 and P9 connectors that go straight onto the bus-board, a floppy power connector from the PSU onto the A1200 Motherboard floppy power header, a single wire from the Adaptor board to the BusBoard and a floppy connector from the PSU to the Adaptor board. Phew! Finally, you plug your accelerator into the Controller, your Pixel64 into the BusBoard, wire up all your peripherals again and put your tower back together. If you take your time it's all fairly straightforward. Once you've booted your newly rebuilt A1200T up you have to install the software from the floppy provided. This is a piece of cake using the supplied Installer script. It installs the software that initialises the AteoBus, the Picasso96 software and a Mode Promotion utility, although I use MCP for this purpose. Then you reboot, select a Picasso96 screenmode for your WorkBench and you can get used to a fast 24-bit, 800x600 Workbench. PERFORMANCE I used P96Speed V1.2 by Jens Langner to do a before and after speed test on my towered Amiga. The machine under test is EXACTLY the same, the only difference is the AGA or AteoBus/Pixel64 graphics susbsystem. The screen size under test was a 640x480x8 31Hz VGA screen. As you can see, on average the Pixel64 is about 50 times faster than AGA, virtually all the tests are showing a massive increase though. .== Testroutine ========+==== Pixel64 =====+====== AGA =======+= Diff. =. | | | | | | RectFill() | 2556 op/s | 16 op/s | 159.75 | | RectFill() Pattern | 2355 op/s | 16 op/s | 147.19 | | WritePixel() | 133755 op/s | 15578 op/s | 8.59 | | WriteCunkyPixels() | 378 op/s | 45 op/s | 8.40 | | WritePixelArray8() | 374 op/s | 45 op/s | 8.31 | | WritePixelLine8() | 16873 op/s | 3499 op/s | 4.82 | | DrawEllipse() | 7237 op/s | 103 op/s | 70.26 | | DrawCircle() | 8791 op/s | 110 op/s | 79.92 | | Draw() | 2265 op/s | 58 op/s | 39.05 | | Draw() Hor/Ver | 12797 op/s | 77 op/s | 166.19 | | ScrollRaster() X | 120 op/s | 2 op/s | 60.00 | | ScrollRaster() Y | 123 op/s | 2 op/s | 61.50 | | PutText() | 5344 op/s | 260 op/s | 20.55 | | BlitBitMap() | 4822 op/s | 86 op/s | 56.07 | | BlitBitMapRastPort() | 4024 op/s | 84 op/s | 47.90 | | BitMapScale() | 63 op/s | 21 op/s | 3.00 | +=============================== Intuition ============================+ | OpenWindow() | 66 op/s | 6 op/s | 11.00 | | MoveWindow() | 271 op/s | 11 op/s | 24.64 | | SizeWindow() | 87 op/s | 9 op/s | 9.67 | | CON-Output | 205 op/s | 29 op/s | 7.07 | | ScreenToFront() | 60 op/s | 58 op/s | 1.03 | +=======================================================================+ Now for my personal view on the system speedup just based on my experiences with the before and after systems. I used to run my Workbench at 720 x 550 (DblPAL) in 32 colors. I now run at 800x600 in 256 colours, the system feels faster in use than before by a massive factor. Before the Opaque Move and Size options of MCP were a slow, juddery gimmick, now I can move and size ANY sized window as smoothly and quickly as without the patch! Quake runs noticably smoother in 8 bit modes but now you can play Quake, albeit slower but not unplayably so, in 15 and 16-bit modes. Cinema 4D can now be used on a 256 colour screen comfortably with previews rendering into a 24-bit screen. If you're used to AGA and HAM8 speeds and quality you will notice the difference. The Pixel64 is blisteringly fast compared to AGA in use, everything is so snappy and smooth, even in 256 and 65535 colour modes. The quality of image in 16-bit and 24-bit modes is eyewateringly clear and sharp with no HAM fringing. A quick comparison using P96Speed comparing an AGA 640x480 8-bit Productivity screen with a Pixel64 800x600 24-bit screen show the Pixel64 is about 10 times faster even with the greater resolution and colour depth. Performancewise, I am really impressed with this system. DOCUMENTATION AteoBus and Pixel64 comes with one small booklet. It is written in French and English, the English being an obvious translation of the French. The installation instructions are adequate, but no more, I would rate them as less than average. Usage instruction in this manual is also poor although there is a small troubleshooting guide at the end, I've had no problems with this system so I have had no call to look at this section to see if it is helpful or not. The on disk AmigaGuide for the AteoBus is again adequate but no more. The on disk documentation for the Picasso96 RTG software is excellent, well-written and helpful. The Picasso web-site also has useful FAQs for getting the most out of your Picasso96 set-up. Ateo Concepts have their own web site which I think is very well presented. There is a news section telling you of any software updates and also details any new hardware that fits into the AteoBus as and when it becomes available. The download section is also well organised and carries the latest versions of the AteoBus and the Picasso96 software. LIKES AND DISLIKES The massive speed over AGA is excellent. The 256, 65535 and 16.8M colour modes are all stable and a beauty to behold. Creating new screenmodes in the Picasso96 software is simple and allows you to define screen filling, centred modes even on a monitor with very poor digital controls such as my Amiga M1438S. You get all your ChipMem back! The fact that I have three unfilled slots to populate with more goodies, the sound card (AHI compatible) is going to be my next purchase. Let's hope Ateo Concepts get their act together and get this on the market. As a side note Ateo are also planning a Voodoo 2/3 accelerator and a scandoubler to display all your native screenmodes on a pass-thru in the future. No pass-through of native Amiga screenmodes. This is fine for applications on the whole (Except for VistaPro!!) but most PD games such as SpaceTaxi will need you to swap your monitor cable over the the Amiga output or to leave a monitor or television attached to the Amiga RGB port. The documentation is pretty poor and I think Ateo Concepts should really get their english agents, White Knight to turn the translation into something a bit more native sounding. I don't think this is too much to ask for the asking price. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I can only really compare it to AGA, see the above for that! BUGS No crashes have occured so far that can be attributable to the board. The Pixel64 doesn't seem to start up on my machine until I perform a keyboard reset (ie. a Warm Boot), this is quite irritating and I don't know if Ateo Concepts intend to fix it. I suspect it is due to my Blizzard board, but the Pixel64 definately won't fire up when I do a Cold Boot. VENDOR SUPPORT Ateo Concepts can be reached by eMail. Or you can contact their UK Agents by 'phone or eMail. I haven't tried either, but from past experience White Knight are generally Good Eggs in this department. Keep it up lads and lasses. WARRANTY 12 months full warranty AFAIK. CONCLUSIONS I am very pleased with this product. It runs almost all the software I need and is very fast. It has given my Amiga a whole new lease of life no flickery DblPAL any more, nice high resolutions, clear truecolor and high scrolling speed. I can be reached at: Kevin.Bewley@camr.org.uk Feel free to send me your own experiences or opinions concerning this review. I'll be happy to answer your The views expressed within this document are my own. I am in no way connected with the manufacturer of this product (Ateo Concepts). I accept no responsibility for any damage you cause to your computer, you or any other living creature by something you've read or felt was implied by the above review. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 2000 Kevin Bewley. All rights reserved. Everyone's company or copyrights I mentioned above are fully acknowledged. This review is freely distributable by electronic means. Printed distribution needs permission of the author. If Ateo Concepts or any other commercial interest wants to quote me in any form then they must obtain my express written permission. - ----------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBOSHYb5eiiw4OwA/NAQFNswP9ESF7YXEKalCqeMhYFAi363RREm0eutMb RzqN4MQaAK8zDqyh7nfnOlGx8pyjkqL8EAUxaQUI6AzhuzUBWGUx3yHhlDxK81sw g/vAXFNcUzzFWWfvHSx93SCKcM7tG9eaGKt/pqbs3jaA2n38rAOAB83hRi/TjErH bM0es8BcRlU= =mzlY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----