RasterOps Paintboard Turbo 12"

The RasterOps Paintboard Turbo 12" is a 12" NuBus card compatible with 680x0-based NuBus Macs running up to Mac OS 7.5.3. It may be compatible with higher versions of the Mac OS or PowerPC-based Macs, but no information is available at this time.

Hands On: Chris Lawson

Card tested in a Mac IIcx running System 7.1.0. Here are the numbers:

The following video benchmarks were obtained at 640 x 480 resolution using Speedometer 4.02:

computer              1-bit  4-bit  8-bit  16-bit
IIcx, "Toby"          0.252   n/a   0.248   n/a
IIcx, Turbo, off      0.264  0.226  0.202  0.170
IIcx, Turbo, on       0.271  0.293  0.324  0.416
IIcx, Prism, on       0.271  0.255  0.408  0.471
IIcx, 8•24 GC, on  0.421   n/a   0.422   n/a

The "Toby" card is Apple's unaccelerated Macintosh II Video Card. The Turbo was tested with acceleration off and on. Performance improved with acceleration enabled at all settings. It is 3% faster at 1-bit, 30% faster at 4-bit, 60% faster at 8-bit, and a whopping 145% faster at 16-bit.

The RasterOps Paintboard Prism and Apple 8•24GC are shown for comparison. On the more commonly used 8- and 16-bit settings, the Prism outperforms the Turbo by 26% and 13% respectively. The Apple 8•24GC outperforms both cards.

Again, I don't think the software is necessary for acceleration, but it's very useful. Wow, does it have some annoying sound effects in the Turbo control panel (used for enabling/disabling acceleration)! Fortunately, these can be turned off within the control panel.

Something that has really surprised me so far: a Quadra 605 is faster, supposedly, than all these cards have been. I wonder if it's a function of benchmarking them in a IIcx? Honestly, I think the Prism and Turbo are a lot faster than this, but I don't have a NuBus-based Power Mac to test them in, and I still haven't gotten that Centris 650 up and running.

There's a jumper marked "JP3" near the NuBus connector on this card; if anyone has any clue what this does, let me know.

Acceleration/Resolution/Color Support

The card provides standard QuickDraw acceleration and supports the following resolution/color combinations:

• 640 x 480 up to 24-bit
• 832 x 624 up to 24-bit
• 1024 x 768 (at 60 or 75 Hz) up to 24-bit

Software

RasterOps video card drivers can be downloaded from the Mac Driver Museum, where ShrinkWrap disk images are available for RasterOps Graphics Install v3.2 and v3.3, MoviePak, MoviePak2, and VideoTime.