New mother board

[Brian Ellis]

Doc

I think we are talking at cross-purposes.

The attached photo shows A the keyslot on my Marvel and B the socket key of an AGP 4 x socket. when the two are offered up to one another.

How is AGP 4x backwards sockets compatible to 2 x cards, quite apart from the signal voltage issue?

I think all the cards you mention are 4 x, aren't they?

[Patrick]

I humbly offer a simple solution.

Brian, just take a hacksaw blade and cut a little notch in your Marvel card where it's needed.

[IM_Riktar]

Hi Brian,
You pretty much have it summed up on the G200 in a 4x AGP slot. As to alternatives:

I have tried the AIW Radeon and was not teriibly impressed with it's TV-Out capabilities. I also can tell a BIG difference in screen quality compared to my G400 cards. In a nutshell: After 45 minutes of working I have to push away from the screen due to eyestrain, no matter how high the refresh rate is set. I didn't notice this the first time I tried the card out (6 months ago) so maybe this one has to go back to ATI for repair.

But for my overall take (eyestrain aside) check here:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29550

Good luck in your search.

[Brian Ellis]

Patrick

An even easier way: break off the key in the socket!

Seriously, just in case anyone takes us in earnest, there would be no surer means of killing your computer, either way :-(

[Brian Ellis]

I've just had a look at another possibility. Put in a DV card and use a DV bridge. Has anyone done this?

I've looked at what is on the market. The most popular and cheapest one is the Dazzle Hollywood but some of the reviews are not over good. OTOH the Canopus ADVC-100 does seem to have some good reviews. This would liberate the AGP slot to any graphics card (any no-nos?), at the cost of a DV card on top.

I can see the overall invoice is beginning to whizz up to dizzy heights, though

All comments gratefully received.

[TnT]

Brian, if you find a mobo that you like that works with the G200, could you post here or send me a message?

[Brian Ellis]

TnT

Now that's an explosive request

The answer is that, as far as my research has progressed, there ain't no sich animal, I'm afraid.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that the time has come, the Walrus said, to ditch the bloody G-200 Marvel. I'm becoming slowly convinced that it is slowing down my system anyway.

I think I may have found an elegant, low-cost, solution to my problem, that won't cost as much as changing m/b, CPU and memory and yet will do everything I ask. However, this is because my office computer is a P4/1.6 GHz, 512 Mb. This was replaced, earlier this year, because the old one had rendered its soul to the Almighty. Now, I can't type at 1.6 GHz, so what I intend trying is to swap m/bs and PSUs. I can't use the Marvel in it, but I can keep it, just as a graphics card, for my office work.

So, this should allow me to do all my video work in the faster, more powerful, computer, possibly at the cost of somewhat slower graphics in my office work. So how to import analogue video? Well, the Canopus ADVC-100 seems to offer a relatively low-cost answer with good flexibility ( see http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32726 ). This would avoid the costly solution of using a camcorder to do a similar conversion.

I haven't yet come to a final decision, but this is my current thinking.

[Sciascia]

Brian,

I know the pit that is in your stomach quite well. I had so much trouble parting with my G400TV that I thought I was going to be ill. After years of great performance it is like an old faithful dog. You know eachother and work well together. After a while he just can't learn anymore new tricks and doesn't like to play with new toys. It is a comfort thing, I built several systems with mine being the sole consideration. They worked great, but I will tell you one thing...nothing brings more joy than a new puppy . It may take a little while to get it house trained, but after a while you will see how much fun they can be.

Get the new card, move on. Don't put good old Blue to sleep, put him out in the backyard to relax. If the new puppy doesn't work out, sell it and try a new one. you can always bring old Blue out of retirement.

It isn't as tramatic as I thought it would be. I love my new puppy.

[Brian Ellis]

Sciascia

I'll let you know when a deep wuff-wuff is turned into a yap-yap. The problem is that puppies have hellishly sharp teeth at one end and the other end is unspeakable

[Dr Mordrid]

Brian;

The reason your board can't take a G200 Marvel is that they used an old-style part for the AGP slot. You either have an AGP-4 or AGP-4 Pro slot, both of which are being replaced by AGP Universal and AGP Pro Universal in new boards.

AGP Universal doesn't have a key in the slot and can take any card from AGP-1 on up. The voltage is handled automatically by the hardware and the BIOS, but this can also be manually set in the BIOS if need be.

Here's a couple of pix of how AGP Universal works with a G200 Marvel in the K7S5A, Gigabyte K7VRX and Gigabyte K7VRXP:

OUT



IN



Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Doc

Thanks for this info: I stand corrected. Never seen such a connector in this neck of the woods (remember we are always 1 year behind, here ).

I'm beginning to suspect the G-200 is the bus hogger that is stopping the RAID-0 array from performing properly. Have you ever tried that combo? If so, as I've indicated before, it'll have to be bye-bye, G-200!

[Dr Mordrid]

Time to start looking for a nice, cheap ECS K7S5A ($50 USD; PC100/DDR266) or K7S6A ($75 USD; DDR266/DDR333) with an AthlonXP. The ones we have here even have a built-in LAN and basic audio that WORK and can be totally turned off in the BIOS

The G200-TV was a bit higher in bus utilization during captures than the G400-TV, but not that much. Both used the Zoran codec chip.

I can remember using a G200-TV quite effectively with a crystal clocked Fasttrak (FT33/66) on a K6-/300 system, and that had the extra burden of the MVP-3 chipsets buggy cache pipeline and ATA33 drives.

With the newer PLL clocked Fasttrak and faster CPU's the bus issues shouldn't be that much of a problem unless they are sharing an interrupt under Win9x/ME.

Neither the G200-TV or the G400-TV, however, is as good a capture device as the RRS/Mystique 220 combo. This is mainly because the RRS had superior procamps for doing analog I/O.

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

Dr Mordrid, did you get your tx4 working? or did you resort to a new RAID controller?.

I agree about the ECS K7S5A it is just too stable(even XP) and performance is good and soo cheap. I have not seen a bargain board that good for a long time.

MSI have released a 745 ultra which uses the sis 745 chipset and has integrated 1394. (to get agp 4x working properly for a g400 update to the latest bios)

[Brian Ellis]

Hi, all!

I've just had a good bit of news! After years of trying, I've located a mini-DV drive that goes into a 5-1/4" bay at a price that I can (just) afford. This is a one-off professional guaranteed demo model with a few hours usage, so don't all go rushing This means I can now use DV (or at least when I get it ) capture and so on from half my tapes (my prehistoric semi-pro mini-DV camcorder was pre-firewire I/O). This is the death-knell for my old and trusted G-200 Marvel, as I'll be able to do the capture of my VHS-C tapes through the ADVC-100, making everything DV.

I've been toying with buying a cheapo DV camera with digital I/O just to use as a tape deck: this will no longer be necessary with the new mini-DV tape unit, which, in any case, is cheaper than the cheapest camera with I/O, and more robust, to boot.

The bottom line is that I probably won't need a new m/b + CPU . Who knows, I may even be able to migrate to W2k for video work?

When the stuff arrives, it'll keep me busy for a few days

[Dr Mordrid]

No fixes yet for the TX4, but the more I play with it the more I think it's a BIOS issue in the Gigabyte K7VRX and not necessarily a problem with the Fasttrak.

Brian:

DV is great 90% of the time, but don't get rid of your analog stuff entirely if you ever think you'll be doing a keyed effect, title or an overlay with anything other than the alpha channel.

Alpha channels work better, but even they can get twitchy when doing DV.

Dr. Mordrid