Produktname: Picasso IV

Hersteller: Village Tronic, Germany

Produktionszeit: 1996 - 1999

Autoconfig ID: 2167 / 21, 22, 23 | 24 (Z2 | Z3)

UVP/ Straßenpreis: 798DM bzw. 450$ (1997)

The Picasso IV was the last graphic card of Village Tronic developed for Amiga computers.

As the successor of the PicassoII/II+ it was taking a different path for the passthrough of the Amigas own video signal.

It has a scan doubler and Flicker_fixer built-in . That means that the Amigas own video signal will be captured by the Picasso IV and changed in a way that it can be displayed on a standard VGA CRT or LCD display. Expansion of this kind where already available for the Amiga at this time. But the Picasso IV made a difference in how this was done.

Conventional flicker fixers temporarily save the picture data of the Amiga line by line in an fast video memory and read them again at double the speed to increase the display frequency of the picture.

The Picasso IV uses its graphics controller. This controller has the ability to capture digital video streams into its frame buffer memory. The Picasso IVs flicker fixer is just generating the needed control signals for the graphic controller capture port which is writing the picture data directly into the frame buffer memory to directly output them on the VGA port.

This just happen at the programmed display rate as with every other screen mode which the card can handle. Unfortunately its not possible to synchronize the output display rate and the input rate. For that it might happen you see some screen tearing with moving pictures ¹⁾. The flicker fixers is only able to work in standard PAL or NTSC mode since the capture port of the graphics controller is not able work at higher data rates.

The PicassoIV has several expansion connectors for which some modules have been developed.

• Paloma IV (TV, VideoIn)
• Pablo IV (VideoOut)
• Concierto IV (sound card)

The cards manual also mentions a 3D, an MPEG and a PowerPC processor modul. Those where not built/developed for different reasons.

Klaus Burkert † 04.04.2001

The 3D module was planned to have a Voodoo Graphics chipset just like the Macintosh version the 3D Overdrive ²⁾ and 8MB of memory ³⁾. It 'just' would have needed a pcb relayout to make the module fit the local PCI connector of the Picasso IV.

To have a better idea of peoples interest in purchasing such a card a poll was started online on Village Tronics website. 500 people declared their interest and the cards layout was done by an external developer. At the same time the Macintosh market was getting more difficult to handle and new products in this field drew time and money onto them.

Then Amiga main developer Klaus Burkert left the company, like many others at this point. He bought out all of the companies Amiga hard and software and the associated intelectual property. Soon he started to work at Metabox AG.

About one year later he passed away after a major heart attack with only 34 years of age. Following this event all development came to an halt.

The MPEG module was destined to use a chip by ST Microelectronics (STi3560) which never saw the light of day. Also a different chip fitting in size was not available.

The PowerPC module soon was discarded by the developers department since the processor would not have had access to important control signals through the Zorro bus and the added functionalty wouldn't have been much more than that of a PC bridge board like the A2386 of Commodore.

Cirrus Logic GD5446BV-HC-A/GD5446BV-HC-B (PCI bus)

• 64 bit blitter
• 180 MB/s fill rate
• videoscaler with interpolation
• color space conversion (RGB↔YUV)
• picture in picture PIP (video window)
• 16bit digital video port
• 135MHz pixel clock @ 8bit color depth
• 85 MHz pixel clock @ 16 or 24bit color depth
• 32bit color depth with GD5446BV-HC-B, color format BGRA, has to be enabled by a Tooltype in the monitor drivers icon
• 15.5 - 84 kHz horizontal frequency
• 50Hz Interlace - 160 Hz non interlace vertical frequency
• 4MB 64bit 50ns EDO RAM, eight chips (different speeds were used but it doesn't make a difference)
• 128KByte FlashROM, contains the cards firmware

Screen Modes

• 1600×1200×16 interlace
• 1280×1024×24 non interlace

integrated flicker fixer

• programmable up to 160Hz
• 24bit color depth AGA (A1200T/A4000), 12bit ECS/OCS (A500T/A2000/A3000)

external connectors

• VGA HD-15
• 2x SVideo for Paloma and Pablo, video-in and -out
• 2x 3.5mm TRS StereoOut & MonoIn for Concierto sound card

internal connectors

• 80-Pin local PCI slot, no bus mastering arbiter
• 2x 50-pin GPBus, similar to ISA bus for Concierto and Paloma
• 1x 8-pin 5V for PCI module
• 1x 20-pin audio signals for Concierto
• 1x 10-pin audio signals for Paloma
• 1x 22-pin & 26-pin Video capture port for Paloma (VMI)
• 1x 16-pin & 9-pin analog RGB signals and power supply for Pablo VideoOut
• 1x 4-pin RGGL for CD-audio

AudioSwitcher for 4 signal sources (Amiga, CD, Paloma, Aux)

cutable area for use in machines without inline VideoSlot (z.B. B2000)

^* with Zorro bus board

Software: Picasso96 or CyberGraphX 3/4
additional requirements: 68020-Prozessor, Kickstart 3.x (flicker fixer works from Kick 1.3)
note: Linux/NetBSD support
known problems: –

Software/Firmware/Handbücher

• http://www.sophisticated-development.de/software/