Picture Captions

Retina01.iff
RetinaScreenmode and RetinaEmu handle Retina's Intuition emulation.

Retina02.jpg
VLab, the MacroSystem framegrabber, and Retina is a great combination. This gentleman from Deep Space 9 was grabbed off a rolling VHS videotape.

Retina03.jpg
3D-graphics never looked better on the screen than with the Retina.


Tables

Table 1.
AIBB 6.1 test to compare a Retina-equipped A3000 with an A4000/30. The tests were performed with 640x200, 256 color screens.

Test Name: Writepixel
RtnBLTZ3     : 2.06
A4000-30     : 1.00

Test Name: EllipseTest
RtnBLTZ3     : 8.51
A4000-30     : 1.00

Test Name: TGTest
RtnBLTZ3     : 9.84
A4000-30     : 1.00

Test Name: LineTest
RtnBLTZ3     : 36.93
A4000-30     : 1.00



Table 2.
WSpeed-comparision of a Retina-equipped A3000 and an A4000/30.
Displaymode: Productivity, 256 Colors. 16 and 8 color AGA screens were also tested.

              Retina      AGA256   AGA16   AGA8     Retina/AGA
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Put Pixels:   101496      48410    98790   100970   2.1/1.03/1.0
Draw Lines:   23244       780      4345    6852     29.8/5.3/3.4
Draw Circles: 28630       289      910     1014     99.1/31.5/28.2
Draw Boxes:   24945       132      673     1077     189.0/37.7/23.2
Scroll X:     1420        10       58      90       142/24.5/15.8
Scroll Y:     1441        12       61      94       120.1/23.6/15.3
Print Texts:  9014        1072     4537    5769     8.4/2.0/1.6
CON: Output:  1039        120      236     269      8.7/4.4/3.9
Open Windows: 99          17       71      96       5.8/1.4/1.0
Size Windows: 204         26       102     134      7.8/2.0/1.5
Move Windows: 70          7        36      54       10/1.9/1.3
Swap Screens: 326         273      567     566      1.2/0.6/0.6
Areafill:     652         41       206     276      15.9/3.2/2.4
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Retina BLT Z3

By Henrik Mrtensson

The Retina is a popular graphics card among professional Amiga users in Europe. It has also been well received in the U.S. and is known for its reliability and flexibility, if not for its speed. The new version of the card, the Retina BLT Z3, is designed to address the few shortcomings of its predecessor, with more speed, the ability to use higher resolutions, and an on board, optional, video encoder.
As is expected with a MacroSystem product, the Retina BLT Z3 is a well made card. I was able to install it with no more than the usual profanities when I have to pry the lid off my A3000. The card fitted perfectly in the slot.
The system software was just as easy to install using the standard installer program provided on the disk. Unfortunately, the installer didn't bother with XIPaint, the 24-bit paint program supplied with the card, so I had to install it manually.
At first glance, the documentation looked ok. On closer inspection, the impression was not quite as good.
There are two manuals, one for the card and system software, the other for XIPaint. The manuals are adequate, but no more. They suffer a bit from being written by technicians and programmers. With rare exceptions, the people who create a product are just about the last people to let loose on writing a manual. It could be worse, the information you need is usually there, but sometimes you have to dig for it (or just experiment).

Up And Running

Getting the Retina up and running is quite simple if you have a dual monitor system. If you don't have two monitors, the next best thing is a switch box, allowing you to easily switch between viewing the Amiga's normal output or the Retina output.
There are several system programs, but most important are RetinaScreenmode and RetinaEmu.
RetinaScreenmode is a utility used to program the card for use with a particular monitor setup. There are a large number of preprogrammed monitors to choose from, including NTSC and PAL video. Even if a monitor is not in the list, it's a simple matter to set the horizontal and vertical sweep frequencies. Just make sure you have the monitor manual ready when setting the card up. After selecting a suitable monitor, and selecting default screenmodes for Retina's 8-, 16-, and 24-bit screens, everything is set to go.
The second of the programs a Retina owner can't do without is RetinaEmu. This is a very good Intuition emulator with AGA support. RetinaEmu runs as a commodity. Each time a program is started, RetinaEmu checks with the Retina screen database to see if the program should open its screens on the Amiga display, or on the graphics card.
RetinaEmu performs some very neat tricks. Under AmigaDOS 2.04, even the Workbench runs in AGA mode. Yes, it is actually possible to open a 256 color Workbench under AmigaDOS 2.04.
Software written specifically for the Retina should also be able to open 16- and 24-bit windows on a 4-color Workbench. One such program, RetinaDisplay, is included with the system software. Unfortunately, the latest version of the system software, version 2.1, went haywire when I tried to open a 4-color Workbench screen. The same feature worked perfectly with an older release of the software though. Since there are presently only two programs that I know of that takes advantage of this feature, RetinaDisplay and AnCos, and both are perfectly capable of opening their own 16- and 24-bit screens, I guess I can live with this bug for a while. I hope MacroSystem fixes it soon though.

Supplied Software

In addition to RetinaScreenMode and RetinaEmu, there are a number of other programs ranging from utility to animation and 24-bit paint software.
The program I use most is without a doubt RetinaDisplay, a small 24-bitplane display program that opens an AppWindow on the Workbench.
AnCos 1.0 is a small FRED-compatible animation editor. Having AnCos is a boon when working with Race, an animation program that is also supplied. Race is not able to produce full motion video on my system. However, I've found the AnCos-Race software combination quite nice for creating FRED lists, and previewing the results of animations.
XIPaint, the supplied 24-bit paint program is good, when you consider that it is a bundled piece of software. It crashes when you try to feed it path names more than 30 characters long, and it isn't very fast compared to TV-Paint. It has a couple of other quirks, but the paint tools work well and it has an Arexx interface. Though I suppose I will get TV-Paint eventually, I'm in no particular hurry.
Other programs include a screen-blanker and a utility to adjust pixel-clock rates. Notably missing from the European distribution of the Retina software is a screen-grabber, but from what I've heard, such a utility is included with Retina cards sold in the U.S.

Speed Freaking

Reviewers used to complain a bit about the speed of older Retina cards. I don't think there will be any such complaints about the BLT Z3. The card is blisteringly fast. Tests using AIBB 6.1 and WSpeed 1.0 show that Retina easily outperforms AGA in almost every respect. Except when swapping screens, my aging A3000 running AmigaDOS 2.04 was never less than twice as fast as an A4000/30 running AmigaDOS 3.0 when using comparable 256 color screens. In three tests the Retina proved to be well over 100 times faster than the AGA chips.
Of course tests like these never tell the whole story. For instance, due to it's chunky-pixel architecture, the Retina is ill suited to running ANIM-format animations. On the other hand, when using software that takes advantage of the architecture, animation speeds, even in 16 and 24 bit, can be quite respectable. Apart from MacroSystem's own Race, I've tried the shareware animation program MainActor with very good results.
When you read the test tables, you should also keep in mind that the tests were run on two different, though similar, machines, running different versions of the operating system. (If anything, this should work out to an advantage for the AGA chip set, since AmigaDOS 3.0 is quite a lot tighter and faster than 2.04 in the graphics department.)
More important than test results is that Retina feels fast. It's certainly no problem to run a 256 color Workbench all the time, even in high resolutions.

Compatibility

It's fast, but is it any good? In other words, how compatible is it? I've had very few problems with the AGA emulation. Even software that is known to be a bit picky about what hardware it runs on usually works fine. The exceptions are programs that use several layered screens, for instance CanDo and ImageFX. These programs have to be run using the Amigas native chip set. However, there's no problem running ImageFX on the Amiga monitor, and displaying rendered screens on a separate Retina monitor.
I've run Final Writer, Personal Paint, AIBB, CineMorph and other programs in AGA mode with no problem. Just about the only program that refuses to open AGA screens is Professional Page 4.1. On the other hand I can open 16 color PPage screens on the Retina and at least take advantage of the faster screen updates.

The Video Encoder

VCode, the optional Y/C and composite video encoder is easy to install, which was a good thing because the four page manual was in German. (You will probably not have the same problem. The German VCode documentation is something that only afflicts European Retina owners.)
No VCode documentation is really necessary. All you have to do to get it up and going is to select NTSC (or PAL) mode in RetinaScreenMode. Then you can plug your VCR in, and off you go, producing professional quality videos.
There is an unfortunate snag. I found that VCode always outputs overscanned signals, no matter what resolutions you choose. I had thought that I would be able to use VCode to produce instruction videos, but that just did not work.
On the other hand, the Y/C output is quite good, and you could use the encoder to put some very nice looking 8-, 16- and even 24-bit animations on tape.

The Bad Part

The only real problem I've had with the Retina pertains to the way the card builds and uses it's proprietary screen database. RetinaScreenMode decides what screen modes will be available for the monitor you are using. When a program is started, RetinaEmu redirects it's screen to a screen from the selection provided by RetinaScreenMode. This isn't complicated in practise, because RetinaEmu  automatically assigns a default screen, or screen group, when a program is started the first time, thus building its own screen database.
The problem is, that if you want to use the Retina card for more than one purpose, i.e. both for video work and as a multisynk or VGA monitor display card, you can't just switch databases. You have to change settings in RetinaScreenmode and then delete the entries in the display database one by one, before letting RetinaEmu rebuild the database again. The problem is of course made worse if some of the programs you run require a bit of fiddling with RetinaEmu settings before it works properly. By adding Open and Save Named Database options to RetinaEmu, changing the set-up would be made much simpler.
For the time being, I've solved the problem by manually copying the databases and configuration files to separate directories. When I want to switch databases, I just take the content of one of these directories and drop it in the ENVARC:Retina directory where the Retina software looks for it's database. Though a bit cumbersome, it works.

Conclusions

The Retina BLT Z3 has breathed new life into my Amiga 3000. Even programs that do not use AGA screen modes, benefit from the Retina's speed. The emulation works very well, even under AmigaDOS 2.04. Few indeed are the programs that won't run at all on the Retina board. (Games don't count.) The graphics quality is excellent, whether I use a multisync monitor or the optional Y/C encoder.


