Subject: O2 clarification

From: "Bill Nowicki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:29:53 -0800

Someone has pointed out that my comment about the O2 having
video standard was not exactly true. Evidently since the
last time I checked, the video has been made an option.
Sorry to cause confusion, my mistake.

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From: Toerless Eckert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 18:56:43 +0100 (MET)

> Sorry to cause confusion, my mistake.

As we're at confusion: How about the so called "DSP" on the O2 ?
I couldn't find one on the video board..

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From: "Bill Nowicki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:27:15 -0800

On Feb 19,  6:56pm, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> I couldn't find one on the video board.

It is not on the Audio/Video board, but integrated into the
mother board. The Audio/Video module has mostly the connectors,
analog to digital, and digital to analog converters, etc.  I
do not understand marketing so do not know why video ended
up as an option. I would guess the video D-A and A-Ds
are expensive.

The chip I think you are talking about was called VICE
internally, and probably has a sanatized Marketing name
(although the "hinv" command still lists "Vice"!).
It basically takes bits from somwhere and puts them somewhere
else. Right now only a few things are done with firmware,
like basic audio and video, and JPEG. As far as I can tell,
the vic program still does its H.261 on the R5000 CPU.
At the low bandwidths used for mbone quality, this is just
fine, but of course in the future more of the VICE features
could be used with custom firmware.

I do not think this list is the right place for this discussion,
however. Feel free to contact me directly, or take a look at
the  following Web pages:

http://www.sgi.com/Products/hardware/desktop/products/digital.html#O2

http://www.sgi.com/Products/hardware/desktop/tech.html#a-v

http://www.sgi.com/Technology/uma.html