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DraCo
The DraCo, also known as DraCo Vision in one of its later models, was a non-linear video editing workstation created by German MS MacroSystem Computer GmbH in 1994, based on the Amiga platform.
In Germany, a group of Amiga hardware developers, working for what was called at that time MS MacroSystem Computer GmbH, started to deal with the fact that Commodore was going bankrupt and the supply of Amigas would eventually dry up, finishing their commercial venture. In 1994 MacroSystem took the decision of building an Amiga clone geared towards affordable digital video. The task was accomplished in a period of nine months by a group of sixteen people. After four months they had a booting prototype. In their design, they integrated, and then, slightly modified most of the hardware devices they already sold in the past, in this new NLE computer.
The CPU card, called Eltanin, was based on the Warp Engine Amiga accelerator board. It featured a 68060 processor with FPU and MMU at 50 MHz and on some special models it used a 68040.
DraCos had a unified memory architecture. If DraCos are queried on the chipmem they have, they display the video card's framebuffer size (usually 4 MB). The Eltanin card contains four 72 pin SIMM sockets to hold up to 128 MB of RAM.
Unlike traditional Amigas, DraCos lack the Amiga custom chipset, and so they rely on software APIs that retarget many hardware functions.
The computer bus had some peculiarities. The Rastaban was a passive busboard full of expansion slots (much like S-100 busboards). It had five Zorro II Amiga compatible slots, and three DracoDirect slots. There was also a special CPU slot for an Alpha processor, that was never released. Zorro II slots offered a fair degree of Amiga compatible hardware options. On the other side, the DracoDirect slots provided faster speeds and 32-bit transfers, as they were merely created by exposing the majority of the microprocessor signals in those slots.
The graphics card, was a slightly modified Retina Z3 now called Altais, that used the DracoDirect slot instead of the Zorro III slot, as it provided faster transfer rates. It was supported by the operating system by the then new CyberGraphX retargetable graphics subsystem.
The sound card and frame grabber (Toccata and Vlab Motion cards) were optionals, and were eventually built together in a standalone DracoDirect card called Dracomotion.
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DraCo AI simulator
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DraCo
The DraCo, also known as DraCo Vision in one of its later models, was a non-linear video editing workstation created by German MS MacroSystem Computer GmbH in 1994, based on the Amiga platform.
In Germany, a group of Amiga hardware developers, working for what was called at that time MS MacroSystem Computer GmbH, started to deal with the fact that Commodore was going bankrupt and the supply of Amigas would eventually dry up, finishing their commercial venture. In 1994 MacroSystem took the decision of building an Amiga clone geared towards affordable digital video. The task was accomplished in a period of nine months by a group of sixteen people. After four months they had a booting prototype. In their design, they integrated, and then, slightly modified most of the hardware devices they already sold in the past, in this new NLE computer.
The CPU card, called Eltanin, was based on the Warp Engine Amiga accelerator board. It featured a 68060 processor with FPU and MMU at 50 MHz and on some special models it used a 68040.
DraCos had a unified memory architecture. If DraCos are queried on the chipmem they have, they display the video card's framebuffer size (usually 4 MB). The Eltanin card contains four 72 pin SIMM sockets to hold up to 128 MB of RAM.
Unlike traditional Amigas, DraCos lack the Amiga custom chipset, and so they rely on software APIs that retarget many hardware functions.
The computer bus had some peculiarities. The Rastaban was a passive busboard full of expansion slots (much like S-100 busboards). It had five Zorro II Amiga compatible slots, and three DracoDirect slots. There was also a special CPU slot for an Alpha processor, that was never released. Zorro II slots offered a fair degree of Amiga compatible hardware options. On the other side, the DracoDirect slots provided faster speeds and 32-bit transfers, as they were merely created by exposing the majority of the microprocessor signals in those slots.
The graphics card, was a slightly modified Retina Z3 now called Altais, that used the DracoDirect slot instead of the Zorro III slot, as it provided faster transfer rates. It was supported by the operating system by the then new CyberGraphX retargetable graphics subsystem.
The sound card and frame grabber (Toccata and Vlab Motion cards) were optionals, and were eventually built together in a standalone DracoDirect card called Dracomotion.