---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeXTdimension NeXTdimension Board Intel i860 33 MHz RISC processor - 30,000 polygon/sec (Gouraud shaded, triangular, meshed) - 30 ms full-screen clear 130 MB/sec blit rate (peak) Image Compression/Decompression - Dedicated JPEG Image Compression Processor - Real-time compression and decompression to hard disk - User-selectable compression rate Memory - Main Memory - 8 MB to 32 MB of main memory - Expandable using 72-pin DRAM SIMM modules - Display Memory - 4 MB VRAM - 32 bits/pixel color, including 8 bits/pixel alpha channel - Supports double-buffered 16/bits pixel windows Display Resolution - 1120 x 832 pixels Display Output - 13W3 triple-coxial Video Video Compatibility - NTSC video input and output channels (PAL option) - Video output genlocked to input video source - Closed-caption, TeleText, and VITC support Video Inputs - One S-Video using standard DIN-style 4-pin jack - Two composite video using RCA-style jack - Software-selectable Video Outputs - One S-Video using standard DIN-style 4-pin jack - One composite video using RCA-style jack - One RGB video using 9-pin D-shell with EGA pinout Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 10:19:29 EST From: Felipe_Fuster@NeXT.COM - The C-Cube chip will no longer be a feature on the initial ND product, so there will be no real-time compression and de-compression of video. You will still have the compression available but not in real-time, this will be accomplished through software. The reason for this is the C-Cube technology is still not quite there and we don't want to ship a product which is not perfected, ie. video images currently compressed would get distorted. ============================================================ ============================================================ Sep 24 18:22:05 1990 From: clp@wjh12.harvard.edu (Charles L. Perkins) - NeXTdimension has 32 bits, with 8 bits of alpha, allowing all sorts of magic special effects in draw and layout programs (like air-brushing in a pattern behind a car and seeing THROUGH the car windows the pattern behind the car but modified suitably by the color of the glass!). These are true 32 bits, no color tables. It has an Intel i860 built-in that does a minimum of 30,000 Gourand-shaded polygon fills per second, and that allows the standard NeXT U.I. to run as fast (and faster!) that the B&W U I. even though it's pushing arount 8 times more data for every window! Full 32-bit color windows can be dragged around in real-time just like the B&W windows can. Steve showed all sorts of really striking color images, and when you look up close, it is truly photo- realistic color like one of the best of the monitors at SigGraph. - Then came the section that brought the house down...Steve was looking at a door in B&W in the bitmap editor, and he pressed what looked like a large CD play button...the door was a frame from the Wizard of Oz just as Dorothy is about to enter Oz, and as we watched, it came to life and played full-motion color video in full-CD sound in real-time in the window. The Wizard of Oz ran and ran as people clapped and clapped. The damn NeXTdimension has real-time display of video on the screen, built-in JPE G compression in a VLSI chip that performs up to 100-to-1 reduction on the fly for I and O, it has two RCA video inputs (with an S-video slaved to one of them), and an RCA video output with S-video as well. Also RGB output. Also any color monitor can be used for output. Also, here's the price: ===> $ 3995 <=== - When Steve announced that and then took a live video feed of himself, showed us it updating in real-time, captured a frame into the editor, and then composited in Donald Duck sitting on his hand, all in a few seconds, the crowd went wild. This was a moment of Myth. All of the hardware and software ideas of that momentous 1968 demo by Doug Engelbart were finally becoming available on an afforable platform, and we could feel the world changing around us. It was a feeling I won't soon forget. - The NeXTdimension color card has 8 SIMM slots that can accommodate up to 32MB (Megabytes) of memory using eight 1Mx36 SIMMs. The minimum configuration is 8MB using eight 256Kx32 SIMMs. You can add parity memory to the NeXTdimension color in groups of 2 SIMMs of the same style. Please see chart #4 for possible configurations. Note: The NeXTdimension color card can use parity style SIMMs, however at this time it does not actually implement parity checking. ============================================================ Date: Wed, 6 Feb 91 11:53:07 PST - The really exciting news, however, is the top-of-the-line, 32-bit-color NeXTdimension ($14,115 to $17,615). This box will knock your socks off. It's actually a NeXTcube with an additional NeXTdimension graphics board and a 16-inch Sony Trinitron color monitor (1,120 x 832 pixels, 32 bits per pixel) in place of the gray-scale monitor. - The specs of the NeXTdimension board are just short of incredible: An Intel i860 33- megahertz RISC-based graphics coprocessor. Eight megabytes of RAM (expandable to 32 megabytes) dedicated to the i860, plus another 4 megabytes of VRAM for the display. A J PEG coprocessor for real-time image compression and decompression. And NTSC video input and output, with genlock. You can get a NeXTdimension graphics board for a NeXTcube (or for an original 68030 NeXT) for $7,115. - The NeXTdimension is fast. How fast? Try this on a Mac Ilfx: Open two 24-bit-color images in an image-retouching program. Arrange the windows so they're overlapping. Move the top window. Watch the bottom one redraw. Now try it on a NeXTdimension. No visible redraw. The underlying picture's just there. - The Colors Panel. I made a passing reference to 32-bit color on the NeXTdimension. What I didn't tell you is that this is true 32-bit - not 24-bit - color. NeXT doesn't let those other 8 bits lie around with nothing to do. It uses them as an alpha channel. which lets you assign transparency values as well as color values to images. This is, in effect, an extension of Display PostScript; one of the PostScript model's greatest shortcomings is its inability to handle transparent images. NeXTstep's Color s panel - similar to the Mac's Color Picker but more advanced - is where color and transparency values are assigned. - Support for creating composite images is also built in to the system (see Figure 4). You can overlay multiple images to create a single composite image, but each component image remains a separate, floating object that can be moved ad infinitum without permanently changing the final image. Transparency lets you see through one image - a window in a car, for example - to another image - such as a tree by the side of the road - behind it. Macs can't do this - at least not without a bunch of extra fancy programming. ============================================================ NeXT News--February 1991 - Color Monitor Update NeXT is now offering two color monitor options for NeXTstation Color and NeXTdimension systems. Customers now have a choice between a Philips 17-inch monitor (which retails for $2995) or a Hitachi 21-inch monitor (which retails for $3995). Orders placed for the previously offered Sony monitor will automatically convert to the Philips monitor. If customers want to purchase the larger monitor, please place a change-order as soon as possible. Contact your local NeXT representative if you have any questions. ============================================================ NeXTdimension Product Alert - There is one specification change. NeXT has eliminated the C-Cube Microsystems CL-550 JPEG chip from NeXTdimension. This is because our supplier, C-Cube Microsystems, has failed to deliver chips that meet their specifications. - The elimination of this part will only change two features of NeXTdimension: 1. Users will not be able to store and play-back video from their winchester disks. 2. Users will get software-based JPEG compression and de-compression (built into Release 2.0, and available on all NeXT platforms), rather than hardware-based JPEG compression and de-compression. This will result in typical images taking 3-10 seconds to compress or decompress, rather than having these functions happen instantly. - The price for NeXTdimension will remain $3995. ============================================================ How many colors can NeXT machines display? - The monochrome machines can display 4 gray levels. You can use color apps on a monochrome machine, they will converted into monochrome images and dithered accordingly. - Color NeXTstations can combine 4 bits of red, green and blue primaries for a total of 4096 "pure" colors. The imaging functions dither the image to produce intermediate colors. - NeXTdimension can combine 8 bits of red, green and blue for 16,777,216. There are not 16 million points on the display so all can not be displayed at once. Further display technology limits the usable color space. - None of the NeXT products support color look up tables where the user can define their own color palette on a per window basis. This feature is useful for displaying images which have adaptive lookup tables, and display pure grayscale images on the color NeXTstation. On the NeXTdimension images can be converted to full 24 bit representation. ============================================================ Why is my machine so slow when I run the monochrome and NeXTdimension displays? - [New entry July 31 1991] There is a bug with the window system in which if you select the monochrome display as your primary display the server will be much much slower. The solution for those wishing to use both displays is to select the color (NeXTdimension) display as the primary display. The most optimal configuration at present with the NeXTdimension is to run only the color display. ============================================================ Thursday, May 30, 1991 - About the best reason for buying a cube instead of a pizza box is the supposedly-shipping-any-day-now NeXTdimension board. This is a 32-bit accelerated graphics and video board which pretty well defines state-of-the-art. (Actually, it only uses 24 bits for color, producing the usual 16.7 million shades. The additional 8 bits are used for things like image transparency and other cool effects.) - The NeXTdimension board uses an Intel i860 to juice up its graphics speed and will have the capacity to do real-time, full-screen video compression and decompression probably using the C3 JPEG chip. (I say "probably" not because I'm privy to any inside dope, but it appears the reason the board has been delayed has to do with compression chip troubles.) - I haven't seen the compression chip working, but I have watched a NeXTdimension board do both color graphics and uncompressed video and it is astonishing on both counts. Despite the color density, screen changes and refreshes occur even faster than they do on a standard gray-scale system. Video images can come from a combination of sources including VCR's, laserdisks, and camcorders in either PAL or NTSC formats. ============================================================ From: crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) Date: 28 May 91 20:58:20 GMT Distribution: comp - According to NeXT representatives at (800)848-6398, the NeXTdimension board is shipping. New (not already outstanding) orders for NeXTdimension boards are expected to be filled in four weeks. That, along with the first-come- first-serve policy, implies that outstanding orders will also be filled in four weeks. The status is the same for N7014-08 and N7014-16. - Also of note is that the NeXTdimension board is shipping without JPEG compression hardware, but that the price of the NeXTdimension board includes (officially) JPEG hardware to be shipped in the future when it is ready. - The cable for connecting a NeXTdimension board to a NeXT Color MegaPixel Display (either the N4001 17" or the N4005 21") is included with the NeXTdimension Starting Point Kit (N8527). But, a person at 800-848-6398 told me that NeXT might include the cable alone (at no charge?) with orders not including the NeXTdimension Starting Point Kit. I already bought one extra starting point kit -- I wonder if I should get another one, just for fun because they're priced so reasonably :-) Gary ============================================================ From: lee@pipe.cs.wisc.edu (Soo Lee) Date: 30 May 91 23:30:44 - I am afraid that C-CUBE is changing their mind on JPEG chip. As I learned that DTC(Discrete Cosine Transformation) is implemented on JPEG chip, I am puzzled why they didn't switch to WAVELET algorithm which appears better, cheaper and faster than DTC algorithm. I agree that WAVELET comes later that DTC as JPEG emerges its standard but they could switch its standard in the infancy of WAVELET. Since Postscript II has internal DTC filter, it is not highly likely for NeXT to change daughterboard with WAV ELET soon. However, performancewise, NeXT would rather change its compression support in the favor of WAVELET algorithm if daughterboard design won't cost much. Is there anyone who can tell me what is the future of "daughter board" of NeXTDimension could be? Soo lee@cs.wisc.edu ============================================================ June NeXTNews: - The following is the content of the June NeXTnews. It was mailed to NeXTdimension Configuration Alert: - This is to alert you to a problem NeXT customers may run into with NeXTdimension, and the (happily simple) way they can avoid it. This message went to all Systems Engineers on June 18th. Please contact your NeXT SE if you have any questions. - The Bad Configuration A couple of customers have had extremely bad initial impressions of NeXTdimensions, whereas other customers and internal users were very happy. We ran down a major source of the difference: there is one configuration of NeXTdimension which is dramatically slower at most color tasks than all others. The "bad" configuration is a two-headed NeXTdimension system (i.e., one configured with both a MegaPixel monochrome monitor and the NeXTdimension color monitor) with the monoc hrome screen set as the zero, or default, screen. Any other configuration is much preferable. The bottom line is that we do not recommend any customer use the above configuration; it works, but it can be amazingly slow. - For instance, zooming to 200% in Scene while looking at a 1.66MB tiff file takes 130 sec. on the bad configuration; on other NeXTdimension configurations, it takes only about 20 seconds. Billiards is around a factor of 10 slower on the bad configuration. - How to get Into or Out of the Bad Configuration If your customer orders a fresh system, or adds a NeXTdimension upgrade to an existing cube, the system will power up and, by default, only use the color NeXTdimension screen. To configure a system double-headed at all, the user must run the Preferences app and use the new multiple screens preference item to enable the monochrome screen. - The only way to get into the bad configuration is to then drag the login window icon over to the monochrome screen to set it as the zero screen. For your new NeXTdimension customers, make surethey don't do that. - For existing customers who may have done that already, they can set the zero screen back to the color screen by dragging the login window icon back to the color screen. - There is no likely fix for the slow configuration -- the solution is to avoid it. - We are considering how we can help customers avoid this situation (e.g., whether we can revise the Release Notes or ND doc), but nothing can happen for awhile (so we're telling you right away!). ============================================================ This update went to all NeXT field sales on June 18th. 7 NeXTdimension computers are designed to work with both a monochrome MegaPixel Display and a MegaPixel Color Display at the same time. This allows the user to drag windows across both displays as well as use both monochrome and color displays simultaneously. If your customer has a NeXTcube with a serial number lower than AAK0016370, the system will only run with both monochrome display and a color display connected. Should a customer want to stop using the MegaPixel monochrome display and replace it with a NeXT Sound Box to use only a color display, the customer must replace the power supply in the NeXTcube by purchasing the Power Supply Upgrade Kit. From: thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Digital World - Color Date: 7 Jun 91 01:14:14 GMT Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA A clue on NeXTdimension performance - beef up the CPU memory as far as your checkbook allows if you are doing image processing. We found this out using prototypes and the guys at DW repeated this. If you are going for video animation then the ND memory needs beefing up. The exact quantity needs to be figured emperically. We are putting 64MB into our ND cubes. ============================================================ To: Friends of NeXT (recipients of "News from NeXT") From: Ron Weissman Date: June 28, 1991 - NeXT Dimension Update NeXT began volume shipments of the NeXTdimension color graphics board for the NeXTcube in late May. The NeXTdimension provides NeXTcube owners with accelerated 32bit true-color, real-time video capture and display, and an dedicated Intel i860 RISC-based graphics processor. The NeXTdimension board requires NeXT System Release 2.1 and the NeXT Bus Interface Chip (NBIC). The NeXTdimension board is available in both NTSC and PAL versions and retails for $3,995. NeXT offers 17" and 21" Color MegaPixel displays for NeXTdimension purchasers. The 17" display retails for $1,995. The 21" display retails for $3,495. Higher education discounts apply to all the products mentioned above. ----------------------------------------------------------------------