Reply 40 of 77, by creepingnet
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Bondi wrote on 2022-02-03, 09:29:Ah, sorry, missed your earlier post. […]
creepingnet wrote on 2022-02-02, 17:06:Bondi wrote on 2022-02-02, 16:28:Interesting! Thanks for the pics.
Is this indeed a video card as they call it? Or it's a MPEG decoder? How does it work? And does it work in DOS?I tried to post that in the thread above, but was kind of excited to see the thread 🤣
Ah, sorry, missed your earlier post.
- The card is a mpeg1 Decoder (will confirm again later) card, it seems (per the manual) it does not record audio though (though […]
- The card is a mpeg1 Decoder (will confirm again later) card, it seems (per the manual) it does not record audio though (though it could probably be rigged to if one were to pass the audio source from the heaphone jack to the line-in of say, a Versa M or P laptop which has a sound card using alternative software).
- It does work in DOS. There's a program called "FullTV" that allows playback through the card to be displayed on the laptop's screen. Seems it uses 320x200 mode as well (not sure if true color or 256 color).- The card seems primarily aimed at NEC Versa Ultralite/E/V/M/P model laptops such as those I own (I have a NEC Versa 40EC, V/50, M/75, and P/75) which are PCMCIA x2 16-bit Systems. The install program specifically lists off the NEC versa laptop computers I have + the one I don't (Ultralite) to determine installation I believe.
- The Dongle is composite input and has a "headphone out" on it, which makes sense, the Versa Ultralite/E/V models don't have a sound card so all sound is handled through the PCMCIA card, likely as just a passthrough. But the P/75 had ESS AudioDrive and the M/75 & M/100 have Crystal CS-4231-KQ WSS chips in them so those might be usable to record MPEG1 off of to a hard drive with sound.
That said, reading the manual for the laptops vs. the card, they tend to point to the Phoenix Card Services as being better, which is highly odd since I have the entire drivers collection from the NEC FTP, and the Ultralite/E/V/M/P all shipped with Cirrus card services (SCIRRUS.EXE being the main TSR). However, it seems I'm getting something out of Cirrus.
How the Cirrus services work is it sends a command to power up the PCMCIA port and then uses a series of "reference files" to determine the settings for the card, IIRC this card lives at address 380h (heck, the reference files for Cirrus are plaintext). These card services also tend to connect themselves to a NEC provided PCMCIA utility that allows you to hot-swap PCMCIA cards in Windows 3.1 in real time and it can auto-detect the card type if there's a resource file for it - picks up this card + my Aironet, WaveLAN Silver, PCMCIA Ethernet, and Xjack modems all surprisingly well, though it can be janky at times.
I have managed to get this card working somewhat - once - in DOS using the FullTV app, but I have not yet got it working in Windows 3.1 yet. I might want to do some exploring to see if I can find some more DOS programs for this kind of card. Part of why I picked it up is to make some YouTube videos with my old Windows 3.1/DOS laptops....just to claim I am one of the few, if any others, on YouTube recording on a 486 :XD.
My understanding may be wrong, sorry for that, but I'm a bit confused. Is this a capture card or a mpeg decoder or both? Does it play avi files from HDD(decoder) or video from the composite input(capture)? In a way you referred to both in your description.
Anyways the fact that it works in DOS is quite unique. If it turns out to be a MPEG decoder card, then it's the only one that I know of that works in DOS. As for capture cards, there are IBM/Ratoc cards that work in DOS as well.
Just capture I believe. But the software seems to have an mpeg encoding capability I believe as that's one of the video formats listed in the manual that it can record video in in Windows, I think it may even do mpeg2 as well (but don't quote me on that). I'll give the manual a look tonight and verify everything.
In DOS it just overlays the input over the screen I believe for FullTV. That said, it's more reliable with FullTV than it is with VersaVideo as I had an easier time getting a signal out of it than I did using VersaVideo. That application, as far as I'm aware, does not record anything. But there's no telling if there's not some goofey old DOS AV application out there that might not work with it, even if with some software hacking.
In Windows 3.1x it does the same thing with VersaVideo like any DV Capture/TV Tuner card would, but what's unique is the application can record clips not just to HDD but also to the computer's memory and allows not just saving and playback from the HDD, but also you can record a short clip and play it back directly from memory - probably a way to get around the slower IDE hard drives of the time. Probably now I could go full tilt from my 60-80GB drives as they are probably fast enough.
I also tried the application out in Windows 95 but I'm having a hard time finding the Nogatech Nogavision driver for the device for that O/S and while the application launches I still have not got it working yet. But if I ever do, I'm sure I'll do a YouTube video about this thing and show it off in full glory. Actually, that's one reason I got it was to see if I Could actually make really funky low-res YouTube videos using my vintage Versa laptops.
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