Old avid AVBV video card question.

[The village idiot]

Anyone know what the old Avid AVBV card really is? Says Targa on it, just not sure what model. The other thing is do you know if there are windows drivers for it? Also what about the Janus MJPEG cards. These are all from old Avid Xpress systems in Mac hardware (9600's and G3's with pci expansion box) and was running on OS 8.X. We were going to try to sell the systems, but it seems pointless now. Just thought I might try the cards in a modern windows machine and see which editors will work with these cards.

[The village idiot]

Let's try this just one more time.

[BJ_M]

Targa 1000 Pro

the targa 2000 with all the options was a good card in its day .. the 1000 wasnt as hot but a LOT LOT cheaper (a full blown 2000 went for 15+ grand just for the card (i have one).

support for the 1000 you may be able to find - but not real likely , avid stopped this whole series ... and pinnacle is not well known for its support of legacy systems ... i think there are nt4 drivers for it - but were a pain to use, you basicly had to use a 440 chipset motherboard for reliability ..


note: the above info may not be totally accurate as i am just going from memory ..

[BJ_M]

if you have a Avid (MC)Xpress system -- that IS a targa 2000 card ...

i have the same system mothballed , release 1.4

there are drivers for that card but there diff. between the mac and pc version of the card i understand .. it runs on nt4 anyway and a b* to run on any other os ...

the new targa 2000 cards are different ...

avid has some changes to the card - so it runs only with thier software.. you cant use combustion for example with it - or fusion .. at least not well, i understand..

Janus MJPEG cards were bundled with the system -- i dont think they can work with anything else ....

[The village idiot]

Thanks. They were in a MC Xpress version 2.x runing on Mac 9600 and then G3. Sounds like the only thing of any value is the Magma PCI extenders. But I may try the cards to see if they are worth any effort. At the very least, we could dual boot a G4 into OS 8.X (the highest our version of Xpress will run on) and have an old analog in/out to go with our Xpress DV pro systems.
Then again, we may just get the one project that anyone wants, and put the final machine into county auction like the 5 others. Too bad, they were nice (for Avid) systems when they were current. Ultimatte and the LE versions of Pro tools, with the Digidesigns suite, and the highest AVR you could get for that model. $2X,000 machines each at the time, now worthless.


Maybe FinalCut will see them and work with them. We'll be ordering a bunch of that and DVDSP for other courses. Now if I could only get a Vegas classroom set up Funny part of that is we would only need firewire cards to put in our audio workstations, and a larger network storage array.

A side note, have you thought of selling all your spare O2 and Octane boxes to WSI for their weather graphics systems? hey still use those in the lower end systems, might at least get them out of storage.

[BJ_M]

not up to me -- company sitting on a load of octanes, o2's and older systems and big rack sized sgi stuff - all in storage ... we tried the 20" sgi monitors with other stuff - but they are beat (to bad as they are really FD500 sony's - still one of the best monitors ever made and what i still use along with flat panels personally -- the sgi sw1600 flat panels (still one of the best flat panels ever made (110dpi, .19 dot pitch)) work fine with both pcs and macs as there is now an inexpensive non sgi adaptor made for them to work with any dvi that can do 1600x1024 resolution).

the avid mc express system was getting tossed so i brought it home but dont use it ... as vegas is so much more user friendly.

really between FCP and Vegas - you can do it all -- what used to cost 50k+ a few years back and 100k+++ for HD

octanes were 30k each a few years ago --- so sad really ..


we still use my old sgi 500 4cpu x xeons system ..... they use it it for autocad now, which runs great on it ..

a mac 9600 or g3 with any avid system on it still sells for stupid prices on ebay now and then ... by piece - they are worth nothing (17k targa cards sell for a couple hundred now max)
..

what a reel nitro system ? or trinty or media 100 -- got those also .. big big bucks a few years ago ..

now just taking up room in boxs ..

[The village idiot]

Lots of things sell for stupid prices on Ebay every now and then. It amazes me what some people will pay more than going retail for, once the bidding starts.