DraCo casework

DraCos have suffered several case permutations over its comercial life. Here you have them:

Preproduction and early released DraCos had this appearance
 (picture credit: Unknown contributor via email)



This is the standart release model case. Weird artwork, dont you think?
 (picture credit: Will "salaxy54" taken from http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Draco-Casablanca/)



And this is the famous cube called DracoVision
 (picture credit: taken from http://www.amiga-hardware.com/)

The guts of the beast

The DraCo is internally speaking, composed of a basic set of three different cards/components named after stars of the Draco constellation (Rastaban, Eltanin and Altais). Of course, eventually DraCos offered a much wider variety of cards and expansions than these, but then, these are the bare essential ones to get a working unit.

Altais, the DraCo graphics card:
(picture credit: Pavel Svetlik taken from http://amiga.resource.cx/)

                                                   This is a specially designed graphics card, it is basically an Amiga Retina ZIII with a changed product id and the ability to create vertical blank interrupts. Its design is based on the NCR 77C32BLT chipset which sports 4MB of video memory. This card, unlike ordinary Amigas, displays its output at 31Khz making it compatible with ordinary PC compatible monitors with a classic VGA style 15 pin connector. In this particular case, the Altais does not interface the DraCo with Zorro III slots, but it does it thru its custom DraCo Direct bus, which is faster, and it does not require any custom Amiga chipset (Buster chip) to function.
                                                   This card, also has a super video (Y/C) and composite output, but these are only available when the optional V-Code module, which can be either PAL or NTSC, is plugged to the blue sockets on the Altais pcb.
                                                    It is important to know that there are three RTG enviroments which can happily work with this graphics card, supplying its functions to the underlying AmigaOS. These are the ancient RetinaEmu, the more compatible Cybergraphics, and the popular Picasso96. Each one having its own strengths and weaknesses.
                                                      The Altais can drive displays in 24 bit resolutions at up to screen sizes of 1152 x 864. It can also work in 16 and even 8 bit modes, where it can extend its screen size up to a maximum of 2400 x 1200.


Rastaban, the DraCo busboard:
(picture credit: taken from http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/draco.html)
                                                  This card has the peculiarity of being a passive backplane, (its design loosely resembles the antique S-100 busboard present in early 8 bit computers) that now holds the keyboard and AT power supply connections, and most importantly, holds the rest of the DraCo expansion devices by either means of five Zorro II slots (which are somewhat compatible with Amiga devices), or its 3 custom DraCo Direct slots. It also contains two slots which are reserved for the Eltanin cpu card.


Eltanin, the soul of the DraCo:
(picture credit: Tord and Valeria Magnussen taken from http://amiga.resource.cx/)
 
                                                 Eltanin, contains the most important components of the DraCo: the 68060 microprocessor, clocked at 50 mhz, the SCSI II interface based on the NCR 53C710 chipset, four memory banks which can hold up to 128MB in 72 pin simms, an AmigaOS 3.1 kickstart rom, and the good old real time clock.

DraCo prototypes: DraCo portable

Model name: DraCo portable    

Company: MacroSystems Computer GmbH
   
Year: 1995   
Status: Prototype
(picture credit: taken from http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_prototypes.php)

Architecture: DraCo (not DracoVision) based, it was a new portable "field model" bearing all the internals of it's big brother.

CPU: A 68040V at 33mhz (Note that the 68040V is a rarely seen in the wild, variant of the 68040 that can run at 3.3 volts just like 68060´s do)

Memory:4 MB of fast memory (most likely upgradeable to 128MB by using four sets of 72 pin simms)

Display: Built in 12" LCD with 4:3 aspect ratio at a resolution of 800x600 in 24 bits and 1MB of VRAM. It is attached to the case on a side by a hinge system (probably to pull it
down, and then flip it, in order to be protected when transported)

Casework: It is a big black lunchbox shaped case. These cases are commonly available from different manufacturers such as Acme, Dolch, BSI, etc.

Keyboard: Custom made black enclosure with white keys. No numeric keypad, includes a touchpad. Keyboard attaches to the luggage case and closes it.

Floppy drive: a black faceplate floppy seems to be located on a side on top of the circular port hole

Proposed consumer price: 13.000 Deutsch Mark

Exhibitions were it was shown:
                                                  NAB 1995
                                                  Photonika in Cologne on September 18th 1996
                                                  Computer 96 in Cologne from 15th to 17th November 1996

The DracoVision

Sometime in 1996, MacroSystem redesigned the DraCo, to end up with an updated design now featuring a cube shaped case with plenty of room and an improved power supply. The goal with this new model, called  "DracoVision", was to differentiate it from ordinary PC´s of that era, in order to appeal to overseas customers. From a technical point of view, the DraCo now accepted commonly available EDO memory.

 (picture credit: taken from http://www.amiga-hardware.com/)

Technical features

Processor, memory and chipset

 

Micrprocessor: 68060 at 50mhz
RAM: from 4MB up to 128 MB Fast RAM in four 72 pin SIMM sockets
The most unique technicality of DraCo is the absence of the Amiga custom chips. Agnus/Alice, Denise/Lisa, Paula and the others are all missing. So thus there's no need for Chip RAM as well. DraCos only kept two CIAs for its I/O ports and the Kickstart ROM for Amiga OS. Thanks to retargetable graphics, most well written Amiga software runs on it without hiccup. A curious fact is that unlike Amigas, DraCos show 4MB of graphics chip memory.

Graphics

 

DraCos shipped with an Altais display card in one of its DraCo Bus slots. The card has the same features as the Retina BLT Z3, the screen modes are programmable through CyberGraphX from 320×240×24 to 1600×992×16.

Video and audio

 

When DraCo was released, the 32 bit V-Lab Motion card was not ready yet. They just put a Zorro II Vlab Motion and a Tocatta audio card in it till then.
Draco Motion combines all features of Vlab Motion and Toccata, yet it uses entirely different components. It compresses and decompresses JPEG frames off-line for rendering, with selectable ratio of 3:1 - 50:1 from MovieShop. Image quality meets CCIR 601 4:2:2 standard 720×576 (PAL).

 

Expansion slots

 

3× DraCo Bus slots
5× Zorro II slots
Using Zorro III would have either required the presence of the Amiga custom chips or the development of a custom control logic. MacroSystem chose to create a simpler 32 bit bus, essentially a buffered 68040 bus with AutoConfig support, and call it DraCo Direct Bus. The specifications have never been officially published, so there are no cards made for it by third party developers. Only two cards were available from MacroSystem (Altais and Draco Motion). The third slot was meant for a real-time rendering card with a DEC Alpha processor on it, but never finished.
The Zorro II bus of the DraCo runs at higher clock speed, giving about 1 MB/s extra over the standard Amiga Zorro II slots. It allows the 16 bit V-Lab Motion card to produce better quality video output, but makes many Zorro II expansion cards incompatible with the DraCo.

Interfaces

Main board:

1× serial DB25 male, RS232

1× parallel DB25 female, Centronics

1× SCSI II DB25 female

1× internal floppy 34 pin header

1× internal SCSI II 50 pin header

1× serial pc mouse DB9 male connector

1× pc keyboard, 5 pin DIN

Display card:

1× video DB15 male, analog 31Khz RGB

1× composite video, RCA jack (requires V-Code module)

1× Y/C video, 4 pin mini-DIN (requires V-Code module)

Video card:

1× Y/C in, 4 pin mini-DIN

1× Y/C out, 4 pin mini-DIN

1× YUV out, 6 pin mini-DIN (requires Component module to become active)

1× FireWire, IEEE-1394 (requires DV module)

1× composite out, RCA jack

2× stereo audio in, RCA jacks

2× stereo audio out, RCA jacks

Drive bays

1× 3.5" front bay occupied with a high density pc floppy drive

1× 5.25" front bay filled with a scsi cd-rom drive

4× 5.25" extra front bays
1× 3.5" extra front bay

 (picture credit: taken from http://www.amiga-hardware.com/)

About two years later from its launch, a revised DraCo model was released, now called "Draco Vision", which featured a cube shaped case, support for EDO memory, and an improved power supply.

Welcome!

This blog is completely devoted to the apreciation and enlightment of a very special kind of computer which acted as one of the very first non linear video workstations, in the prosumer video market.

In 1994 a group of sixteen talented people at MacroSystem Computer Gmbh created this NLE dubbed "DraCo", which shared a lot of compatibility with the custom Amiga architecture. In fact, much of the Amiga software and hardware could happily run on it.
MacroSystem cleverly integrated, and then slightly modifyed most of the hardware devices they already sold in the past, in this new computer, which is the object of this blog´s affection.

I welcome you to this blog. Please feel free to post your comments as irrelevant as they may seem to you, because they will be surely apreciated by me, and will undoubtely enrich the content of this blog.