Quantum Leap Software made video frame grabbers for PC and Amiga back in the day.

I wonder if there is any software still floating around somewhere because it would be fun to play with.

Tommaso

If the card is a frame grabber, it can be used only for single still frames, as it lacks anything that allows decent bandwidth on the bus: This card only supports 8-bit read I/O read and write cycles. The "LS244" is an 8-bit driver, connected to the ISA data lines. This chip is unidirectional, with the output connected to the ISA pins. So that driver is only used for I/O reads. The NEC RAM chip starts with D422 (short for µPD422). It might be an µPD42270, which is a special kind of VRAM optimized for NTSC applications, providing 4 banks of 263 lines of 910 bits each.Assuming a resolution of 455 x 263, you would have just 8 bits per pixel, which is borderline for image quality. Maybe they operate with chroma subsampling. The Lattice chip seems to be just use as I/O address decoders, and I can't find a data sheet for the VP8708, but it should be some kind of video processing chip at that position.

I wonder if it's this one... https://semiconductors.es/datasheet-pdf/325385/TDA8708B.html

CPLD is most likely implementing PLL to sync capture clock to video. Whole thing reminds me of Video Toaster and 1995 Snappy Video Snapshot LPT dongle by Paul Montgomery (Newtek co-founder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc.). @TubeTimeUS on twitter did a Snappy deep dive, teardown and reverse engineering down to schematic and figuring out remarked "PLAY HD-1500" main chip is just a XC2064 FPGA. PLL + 30msps ADC + special 2Mbit video ram capable of holding whole field = this thing grabs whole one field of video all at once after perfectly synchronizing to 14.318MHz video clock.

twitter wont let you see more than one tweet without account 😒 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1301990455182155776 and of course pictures expired
https://xcancel.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1301990455182155776 https://xcancel.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1302092179087659010#m https://xcancel.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1302717545275748352#m

Many Bothans wrote on 2024-07-18, 20:48:

Quantum Leap Software made video frame grabbers for PC and Amiga back in the day.

Interesting...

Tommaso wrote on 2024-07-18, 21:14:

I wonder if there is any software still floating around somewhere because it would be fun to play with.

Not found anything but I've only been looking in the PC world because of the ISA bus...

mkarcher wrote on 2024-07-18, 21:29:

If the card is a frame grabber, it can be used only for single still frames, as it lacks anything that allows decent bandwidth on the bus: This card only supports 8-bit read I/O read and write cycles. The "LS244" is an 8-bit driver, connected to the ISA data lines. This chip is unidirectional, with the output connected to the ISA pins. So that driver is only used for I/O reads. The NEC RAM chip starts with D422 (short for µPD422). It might be an µPD42270, which is a special kind of VRAM optimized for NTSC applications, providing 4 banks of 263 lines of 910 bits each.Assuming a resolution of 455 x 263, you would have just 8 bits per pixel, which is borderline for image quality. Maybe they operate with chroma subsampling. The Lattice chip seems to be just use as I/O address decoders, and I can't find a data sheet for the VP8708, but it should be some kind of video processing chip at that position.

The best bit for me is the "Demo Unit" hand written on the backing plate. Must have been useful to someone at some point!

If someone in the UK can come up with a definte product/use case and wants to try it out I'm happy to loan it out..

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-19, 02:12:

I wonder if it's this one... https://semiconductors.es/datasheet-pdf/325385/TDA8708B.html

Quite likely, that chip makes perfect sense in that position. It's a ADC to sample the video signal. Typically, you use it to sample at 4 times the color subcarrier (14.318MHz, the card has a matching crystal), and then you need to do the color decoding in software. The ADC has an 8-bit output, and all 8 data lines seem to be connected to the NEC memory chip. So it likely is not the µPD42270, as that one only has 4 data lines. Nevertheless, it is likely a chip with a very similar design idea: No address lines, because both the frame capture (writing to memory) and the frame read-out happen serially in order. Actually, I'm quite sure I found the chip in the 1993 NEC memory data book, volume 2. The µPD42280 matches the pinout perfectly, at least when looking at the 8 data traces from the video ADC to the RAM.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-07-19, 09:02:

Whole thing reminds me of Video Toaster and 1995 Snappy Video Snapshot LPT dongle by Paul Montgomery (Newtek co-founder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc.). @TubeTimeUS on twitter did a Snappy deep dive, teardown and reverse engineering down to schematic and figuring out remarked "PLAY HD-1500" main chip is just a XC2064 FPGA. PLL + 30msps ADC + special 2Mbit video ram capable of holding whole field = this thing grabs whole one field of video all at once after perfectly synchronizing to 14.318MHz video clock.

Indeed, this seems to be a very similar design idea. The TDA8708 on this card has more of the analog front-end integrated, so no need for video front-end built from discrete transistors, as you see in the upper left corner of the Snappy schematics.

Found their old website on the internet archive - https://web.archive.org/web/19970414185557/ht … quanleap.co.uk/

They were located in nfraser01's neck of the woods, so card did not travel too far from home.

Many Bothans wrote on 2024-07-20, 13:00:

Found their old website on the internet archive - https://web.archive.org/web/19970414185557/ht … quanleap.co.uk/

Great find! No software to download though...

At least it confirms the card make and function. The icon for the "Products" category is the exact card as far as I can tell.

Thanks

I remember a kit in the mid to late 90s containing a card that, from memory, was similar. The kit contained a small beige Sony branded color video camera with manual focus and composite output.

I think it was meant for video conferencing. The kit itself might not have been Sony branded.