by We've been using a TARGA+64 board as a second video card in ancient MS-DOS
program to do video overlay on a completely independent NTSC video stream.
But we're (I am) going to convert it to Linux and we've decided that even
though we have a spare TARGA board, we can't allow ourselves to be that
locked into un-replaceable hardware since the new system is expected to have
at least as long a life-time as the old one (which I wrote in '92).
The quick summary of the requirements are:
1. this has to be the second video (VGA) board; the primary one is used
for system control
2. our input is and the output has to be standard NTSC
3. the overlay graphics is moderately crude, currently done in ~400x300
resolution
4. the system has to be Red Hat 5.2 (with real-time Linux extensions)
We're contemplating either:
a) getting a perfectly standard VGA board and an external overlay
generator which accepts one VGA input and one NTSC input and generates NTSC
output.
b) getting a "VGA" board with NTSC output and a (moderately) cheap
overlay generator which has two NTSC inputs and one output.
We think that the cost trade-off is probably in favor of (b) since the
VGA-input overlay generators are significantly more expensive than the
NTSC-compatible products. But the board has to be compatible with our OS
and have available drivers (XFree86 compatibility is definitely preferred)
for what we know is a non-current version of Linux.
I have no experience with second VGA boards in Linux and no recent knowledge
of the availability of NTSC-output VGA boards. I'd appreciate a few
suggestions for a VGA board that we could use.
Thanks
Norman Dresner
Fellow Systems Engineer
Radar Systems Engineering Department
Electronic Systems and Sensors Segment
Northrop Grumman Corporation
MS 520
Box 746
Baltimore MD 21203
Voice: (410) 993 - 2096 Mornings; all-day voice-mail
(410) 969 - 8068 Afternoons with answering machine
FAX: (410) 993 - 8084 On-site
(410) 969 - 8068 Afternoons; call first to arrange