[comp.sys.atari.st] New Graphics board for ST

jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Joachim Vance) (09/21/89)

  Does anyone know any information about the new graphics board for the 
ST.  I heard very little information about it.  It called the Parsec? or 
something similar and I guess it's basically a small graphics computer 
that uses the ST as a host.  It can produce resolutions up to 1028 x 728
and pull colors from a pallette of over 4000.  But what sounded impressive
to me was that you could expand this to 128K colors on the screen at a time
from a palette of over 4 million!  

 Can sombody confirm or deny this and if it is true post more info.
I sure want to know more about something this good.

Joachim
jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu
or
jvance%bonnie@orion.cf.uci.edu

cstein@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Clifford M. Stein) (09/22/89)

In article <1989Sep21.074352.1066@paris.ics.uci.edu> jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Joachim Vance) writes:
>
>  Does anyone know any information about the new graphics board for the 
>ST.  I heard very little information about it.  It called the Parsec? or 
>something similar and I guess it's basically a small graphics computer 
>that uses the ST as a host.  It can produce resolutions up to 1028 x 728
>and pull colors from a pallette of over 4000.  But what sounded impressive
>to me was that you could expand this to 128K colors on the screen at a time
>from a palette of over 4 million!  
>
> Can sombody confirm or deny this and if it is true post more info.
>I sure want to know more about something this good.
>
>Joachim
>jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu
>or
>jvance%bonnie@orion.cf.uci.edu


Yeah, I remember reading about the Parsec Pixel+ by Elmtech Research over
a year ago in _The Games Machine_ magazine, August '88.   Over the summer,
I  saw the August '89 issue and they said they WOULD have an article about
the board in their Spetember '89 issue.
   (all last year they kept saying they'd have a review NEXT month)

From what I read last year, Elmtech was going to release three boards.
One would be a color board with nice resolution and 4096 colors, I think.
The second, the Parserc Pixel+ would have a resolution of 1024x1024,
8 bit planes, and palette of 16+ million colors.  The last board was just
a monochrome board with nice resolution.   All three operated at 6.25 MIPS,
and would plug in through the cartridge port.

If anyone has the Sept '89 issue of _The Games Machine_, please post
us a summary of the article.

				Cliff
cstein@jarthur.claremont.EDU
cstein@hmcvax.BITNET

fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (09/24/89)

In article <1989Sep21.074352.1066@paris.ics.uci.edu>, jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Joachim Vance) writes:
> 
>   Does anyone know any information about the new graphics board for the 
> ST.  I heard very little information about it.  It called the Parsec? or 
> something similar and I guess it's basically a small graphics computer 
> that uses the ST as a host.  It can produce resolutions up to 1028 x 728
> and pull colors from a pallette of over 4000.  But what sounded impressive
> to me was that you could expand this to 128K colors on the screen at a time
> from a palette of over 4 million!  
> 
I assume this is what I just saw at a local store that sells Atari.  I
was in there talking to them about desktop publishing systems for a
proposal I am working on and saw a great monocrome display (19") with
wonderful resolution.  I asked about it and Becky (one of the owners)
told me it was real new but she used it for DTP work.  It was $1800
for the monitor, card for the computer and a TOS upgrade installed.

If you don't find info elsewhere, I am sure she would be willing
to tell you the facts behind these rumors.  The store is Cave Creek
Computers and the number is 206-783-0933.  

-- 
Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155  (206)FOR-UNIX
    amc-gw!ssc!fyl or uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl

covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (09/25/89)

In article <1989Sep21.074352.1066@paris.ics.uci.edu>, jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Joachim Vance) writes:
> 
>   Does anyone know any information about the new graphics board for the 
> ST.  I heard very little information about it.  It called the Parsec? or 
> something similar and I guess it's basically a small graphics computer 
> that uses the ST as a host.  It can produce resolutions up to 1028 x 728
> and pull colors from a pallette of over 4000.  But what sounded impressive
> to me was that you could expand this to 128K colors on the screen at a time
> from a palette of over 4 million!  
> 
>  Can sombody confirm or deny this and if it is true post more info.
> I sure want to know more about something this good.
> 
> Joachim
> jvance@bonnie.ics.uci.edu
> or
> jvance%bonnie@orion.cf.uci.edu

There
have been
a couple
of articles
in various UK ST magazines about the ParSec system by Elmtech of UK. The best
article so far was in the Sept 1989 issue of ST FORMAT magazine. I don't have
the article in front of me, but ParSec comes in 2 models, the low end
selling for about 919 Pounds British (or about $1400 American) without a 
colour monitor (which is another 700 Pounds).

	The Parsec plugs into the ST DMA port and is a standalone box with its
own power supply cables etc. Parsec is supposed to come with a GEM driver so that
existing GEM based programs will run on it. Don't know about games, but Flight
simulator, in 4096 colors, would be phenomonal!!

I will try to type in the entire article tomorrow. 

Does anyone know anything about the new American color graphics board?? It is
supposed to plug into the Mega ST's expansion slot. But, I don't know the vendor.

Richard Covert