Rastaban Zorroboard fuer die Macrosystems Draco Workstation
gesuchtes, aeusserst seltenes Ersatzteil
Ich biete hier eines der wohl seltensten Busboards aus dem Bereich des Commodore Amiga an. Es handelt sich um das Rastaban-Busboard aus der Macrosystems Draco Workstation. Die Draco war der erste Amiga-Clone und hat es geschafft, die Amiga-Hardware in den Profi-Bereich herueber zu retten. Das Busboard dient als Verbindung der einzelnen Komponenten der Draco und bietet neben drei Draco-spezifischen Schnittstellen auch fuenf Zorro II Slots, so dass die etablierten Erweiterungskarten weiter benutzt werden koennen.
Das Board ist in sehr gutem und einwandfreien Zustand. Ein Muss fuer jeden Draco-Fan und ein noch groesseres Muss fuer jeden Amiga-Fan und -Sammler. Diese Gelegenheit solltet ihr euch nicht entgehen lassen, sie kommt vielleicht nie wieder.
Macrosystem hat eine ganze Menge weitere Karten, Zorroboards, Festplatten-Controller, RAM-Erweiterungen, etc. fuer alle Amigas (500, 600, 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, 2500, 2500UX, 3000D, 3000T, 3000UX, 4000D, 4000T, CDTV und CD32) gebaut, z.B.:
Altais, DeInterlaceCard, DraCo, DracoMotion, Evolution 2000, Evolution 500, Falcon 040, Maestro, Maestro Professional, Medusa, MegaKick, Multi Evolution 2000, Multi Evolution 500, Multi Mega Box, Multi Mega II, Multi Serial, Retina, Retina BLT Z3, Toccata, V-Code, V-Code Switch, V-Lab, V-Lab Motion, V-Lab Y/C, V-Lab/Par Y/C, Warp Engine
Man sieht also, dass es sich bei dem Adapter nicht um ein No-Name-Produkt handelt, sondern um eines der besseren und qualitativ hochwertigeren Produkte. Macrosystems wurde inzwischen von der Firma Loewe uebernommen, existiert also weiterhin und produziert auch hochwertigste Video- und Videoschnitt-Hardware.
Einige Infos aus dem Big Book oaf Amiga Hardware:
Case Type: Full Tower (for original DraCo)
Cube (for DraCo Vision)
Processor: 060@50Mhz
MMU: Internal
FPU: Internal
Chipset: Custom - Does not use a traditional Amiga chipset.
Kickstarts: Unknown but also has an additional DraCo ROM
Bus Controller: Unknown
Expansion Slots: 6 x 100pin Zorro II slots (1 reserved for motherboard)
4 x DracoBus slots (2 inline with Zorro, 1 "inline" reserved for motherboard)
Standard CHIP RAM: None - The DraCos memory is unified, it makes no distinction between Chip and Fast RAM.
RAM sockets: 4 x 72pin SIMM slots
(Original DraCo cannot use EDO, DraCo Vision (the Cube) can)
Hard Drive Controllers: 1 x SCSI-II controller
Drive Bays: Tower:
Unknown
Cube:
4 x 5.25" (4 with faceplates)
8 x 3.5" (none with faceplates)
Expansion Ports:
1 x Serial
1 x Parallel
1 x 25pin External SCSI
1 x 9pin Mouse Port
1 x large PC compatible 5pin DIN Keyboard Connector
1 x 15pin VGA connector
Floppy Drive: Unknown
Motherboard Revisions: Unknown
Battery Backed Up Clock: Yes, uses "Coin" shaped batteries
The DraCo was one of the first true Amiga clones to be manufactured. Whilst the machine uses AmigaOS, it does not use a conventional Amiga chipset such as ECS or AGA but exclusively relies on the CybergraphX RTG software (conventional Amigas also use it) which controls the display for the Altais graphics card. The DraCo was not aimed at the home user but at the professional video market, one of the few professional markets where the Amiga made serious inroads. The VLab Motion, another one of MacroSystems products was in development at the time of Commodores demise and naturally they were concerned that the availability of Amigas would dry-up. MacroSystem decided to take the technologies that theyd already developed (RTG graphics card, video digitizing and editing hardware) and create a simple motherboard that would be suited to video through-put. The DraCo was designed to be able to accommodate even uncompressed video, an unheard of feat at the time, however that never really saw reality since the Motion JPEG compression that the DraCo utilised was so good. The DraCo was originally designed as a tower unit, however these turned out to be notoriously flimsy as the cases often broke when shipped. The relauch of the DraCo saw the replacement of the tower case with a much neater looking cube, primarily because of the problems with the tower case and also because the American distributor did not want it to look like a computer, but more like a professional video editing unit as one had to work hard to get computer hardware working correctly. This also saw the DraCo renamed to the DraCo Vision. The DraCo motherboard went through two revisions. The first version which was supplied as the tower form, could not use EDO RAM, however the second version supplied in a cube could, which offered a little extra speed for rendering. The second version could also mix sound in real-time. A DV card was also made for the DraCo which allowed you to control and digitize from a DV deck. The problem was that the card was still converting from the DV format to the DraCos Motion Jpeg format meaning you lose quality - the very thing that shooting digitally is supposed to avoid! There was also a "machine control" card. This allowed the DraCo to remotely control an external professional video machine. Another card, unfortunately never released was the Component Card, a prototype was developed for the VLab Motion. Professional video decks have separate outputs for red and green and blue video - like so many of todays better DVD players. The Component Card gave the Vlab Motion these separate RGB inputs and outputs, but the card never worked and was very fragile - totally unsuitable for a professional environment. Unfortunately MacroSysten lost interest in this when Casablanca development began in earnest. Interest in the Casablanca really wiped out any hope of continued development on the DraCo. The DraCo never could handle SMPTE Time Code which all professional gear has to be able to do - its the industry standard language that various pieces of gear uses to communicate. There were many other problems that were never squashed, for example the awkward "integration" of the titling program Monument Designer. Not only did MD have some significant bugs, but its timeline worked in PAL while the rest of the system worked in NTSC. Audio was always a problem and the workarounds were elaborate and unwieldy to the extreme. Half-hearted upgrades came out from MacroSystem Germany, but the Casablanca was where their interest lay. An optional 233Mhz DEC Alpha co-processor was certainly planned for the Draco and was being developed by a guy who worked at DEC in his spare time, unfortunately nothing was ever released to the public. Another piece of vapourware was the Paladin card. Since the DraCo was terribly expensive in the US, around $15,000 (although in Europe it was priced around the same an a nicely equipped A4000) MacroSystem had an idea for a cheap Amiga 030 accelerator and HD controller that would contain DraCo slots. The idea was that a conventional Amiga would be able to use the high quality DraCo Motion video card and the Altais graphics card without the expense of the DraCo. This never even made it to the prototype stage.
The DraCo itself consists of several cards which all plug into the busboard called the Rastaban. The Rastaban contains traditional Amiga Zorro II expansion slots but also contains the DraCos own expansion bus simply called Dracobus. The Dracobus was significantly faster than Zorro II and was capable of 30MB/sec transfer rates, compared to Zorro II which only achieves a theoretical max of about 8MB/sec. Even Zorro III is maxed out at about 25MB/sec. The motherboard which is called the Eltanin is actually a form of card which plugs simultaneously into the top Zorro II slot and top DracoBus slot. As well as being able to use Zorro II cards, the Draco also utilised the handful of DracoBus cards such as the DracoMotion. The Draco has 4 x 72pin SIMM slots for up to an additional 128MB of RAM, as well as two CIAs, a Draco ROM, SCSI-II controller and ROM sockets for plugging in the Amiga Kickstart ROMs. The CIAs were only really used for controlling the parallel port and this was primarily just for the dongle which came with lightwave. It was not too compatible with many parallel devices. The Zorro II slots are problematic too, if you want to use them for say an Ethernet card, you have to put it in the slot second from the bottom. You have to install another card (didn't matter what kind) in the bottom-most slot to act like a terminator. The Zorro II slots aren't terribly compatible with a lot of cards, in particular Zorro II cards by Commodore seem problematic. In addition to the standard Amiga Early Startup screen, which is accessed by holding down a single mouse button at reset time, the DraCo also has its own Early Startup screen accessed by holding down both mouse buttons at reset time. This allows you adjust various settings for the SCSI controller and hard drives. The DraCo requires two special partions on the hard disk dedicated for use with the video and audio that the DraCo recorded and played back. Conventional Amiga software could not see these partitions so if you wanted to export video for use with say ImageFX then you had to export the video frame by frame with MovieShop to a native Amiga partition before importing into ImageFX.
und aus der Amiga HW Database:
DraCo
Company MacroSystem, Germany
Date 1995
full description is in the models section
short description
non-linear video editing system
runs Amiga OS, compatible with many Amiga productivity software titles
68060 @ 50 MHz
up to 128 MB Fast RAM
no Amiga custom chip set
built-in Fast SCSI-2 controller
After the demise of Commodore in 1994, MacroSystem took a dim view of a successor company who could bring the Amiga back to success. Instead of waiting for the messiah they dropped the idea of developing the Zorro III version of V-Lab Motion and decided to develop an independent platform which could run Amiga OS and allowed easy adaptation of their Amiga non-linear video editing product line.
Processor, memory and chip set
68060 @ 50 or 66 MHz
up to 128 MB Fast RAM
The most unique technicality of DraCo is the absence of the Amiga custom chips. Agnus/Alice, Denise/Lisa, Paula and the others are all missing. So thus there's no need for Chip RAM as well. DraCo only kept two CIAs for its I/O ports and the Kickstart ROM for Amiga OS. Thanks to retargetable graphics, most well written Amiga software runs on it without hiccup.
Graphics
DraCo shipped with an Altais display card in one of its DraCo Bus slots. The card has the same features as the Retina BLT Z3, the screen modes are programmable through CyberGraphX from 320×240×24 to 1600×992×16.
Video and audio
When DraCo was released, the 32 bit V-Lab Motion card was not ready yet. They just put a Zorro II V-Lab Motion video and a Toccata audio card in till then.
Draco Motion combines all features of V-Lab Motion and Toccata, yet it uses entirely different components. It compresses and decompresses JPEG frames off-line for rendering, with selectable ratio of 3:1 - 50:1 from MovieShop. Image quality meets CCIR 601 4:2:2 standard 720×576 (PAL).
Expansion slots
3× DraCo Bus slots
5× Zorro II slots
Using Zorro III would have either required the presence of the Amiga custom chips or the development of a custom control logic. MacroSystem has chosen to create a simpler 32 bit bus, essentially a buffered 68040 bus with AutoConfig support, and call it DraCo Direct Bus. The specifications have never been officially published, so there are no cards made for it by third party developers. Only two cards were available from MacroSystem (Altais and Draco Motion). The third slot was meant for a real-time rendering card with a DEC Alpha processor on it, but never finished.
The Zorro II bus of DraCo runs at higher clock speed, giving about 1 MB/s extra over the standard Amiga Zorro II slots. It allows the 16 bit V-Lab Motion card to produce better quality video output, but makes many Zorro II expansion cards incompatible with the DraCo.
Interfaces
Main board:
1× serial DB25 male, RS232
1× parallel DB25 female, Centronics
1× SCSI DB25 female
1× internal floppy 34 pin header
1× internal SCSI 50 pin header
1× mouse DB9 male
1× keyboard, 5 pin DIN
Display card:
1× video DB15 male, analog RGB
1× composite video, RCA jack (requires V-Code module)
1× Y/C video, 4 pin mini-DIN (requires V-Code module)
Video card:
1× Y/C in, 4 pin mini-DIN
1× Y/C out, 4 pin mini-DIN
1× YUV out, 6 pin mini-DIN (requires Component module)
1× FireWire, IEEE-1394 (requires DV module)
1× composite out, RCA jack
2× stereo audio in, RCA jacks
2× stereo audio out, RCA jacks
Drive bays
Tower:
6× 5.25" front bays
4× 3.5" rear bays
Cube:
4× 5.25" front bays
2× 5.25" rear bays
4× 3.5" rear bays
Early DraCo units were housed in a tower case, later MacroSystem replaced it with a sturdier Cube case taken from a network file server. Both boxes had the same electronics and amount of drive bays inside. Only the cube was shipped overseas.
Two 5.25" front bays are occupied with a 1.76 MB high density floppy disk drive and a 4× SCSI CD-ROM drive. One of the 3.5" rear drive bays is occupied with a SCSI hard disk drive.
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