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Aviator

Manufacturer

FAST

Appearance

length low profile ISA card, 16 bit slot only 1 jumper (5 position) for IRQ selection (default 15)

Connectors

Externally : 3 x RCA composite video inputs (all three may be connected simultaneously, software selectable)
Internally : none

Installation

Hardware

Select a suitable IRQ and set the jumper accordingly. Insert card as usual. Connect input(s) to video source(s).

Software

After the initial set-up program copies the necessary files to the hard disc a message is displayed telling you to go to the drivers section of the Windows Control Panel. There you should find that the Aviator drivers have been installed, selecting 'FAST Electronic Aviator driver' and then 'Setup' leads to a dialog box with IRQ and I/O address settings. Choosing 'selftest' runs the card/driver through various performance checks (e.g. memory read/write, video and onboard registers). The Movieline application is installed in a group. Note that Video for Windows 1.1 (runtime at least) must be installed before running the Aviator installation.

Capture times

640x480x24 8s
640x480x8c 9s
640x480x8g 7s
These times include the time taken to save the file to disc, as this happens immediately after image capture and without further intervention on the part of the user.

Observations

A few minor problems :
  • when clicking on the 'about...' menu item no information is displayed, but the Movie Line window is deselected and cannot be re-enabled until 'Return', 'Escape', 'Space' or 'Alt' are pressed (the about dialog box is probably hidden behind the Movie Line window)
  • If an attempt is made to capture a still image without naming the file first the same happens as above (possibly the same applies to movie files but this was not tried)
  • be sure to keep changing file names (and be careful about which names you use) as no warning is given about overwriting existing files (remember: files are saved without further intervention immediately after capture)
  • although the last colour depth is remembered between captures the file format isn't û it has to be set specifically each time
  • on-screen images appeared to be very dark with a reddish cast
  • even if the file format is set to greyscale the displayed image is still colour (24 bit?)
  • even using a fast computer/graphics card the menus and text entry seemed sluggish (similar to, but slightly worse than Captivator û which also used Video for Windows)
  • in the viewing window there appeared to be dropped lines (seen as the bottom of characters missing)
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