Rainbow Runner HELL !!! pleaze advise!!

[elviscatMAX]

hello everyone,

This is starting to depress me now. I have been trying to get this peice of S**T woking under W2K now for months, and after having to do a OS reinstall i thought i would try it again..but still nothing, i have tried using the advice on one of the forum pages, but the official 2.04 PC-VCR, des'nt have a record button, so how is this supposed to work, if anyone out hs actually manged to et the RR plugged into te G400 MAX, working and captring under EITHER W2k or Win ME wit Mjpeg support...please can you tell me EXACTLY how you did it...............

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG...!!!

-Regards

-KEV-

[Brian Ellis]

Kev

This is not the answer you want, but upgrade to 98SE as a second boot and you won't have any problems.

[elviscatMAX]

cool, but i'm already using ME on dualboot

yeah i'm running me on dual boot and still having nuff problems with it...whas your set up under ME or 98 and can you actually capture with the PC-VCR??

-KEV-

[Damascus]

You cannot capture under Win2K with PC-VCR. Get a 3rd party capture app and a 3rd party MJPEG codec and you should be set.

[Brian Ellis]

Kev

Of course I can capture with the hardware codec under Win 98SE, without any problems, using PC-VCR, AVI-IO or MSPro 6.5 Capture (they all work fine). So can thousands of others. If you try a software codec, it becomes much hairier and this is the only way with later versions of Windows (not sure about ME, but certainly with 2k and XP). Firstly, forget Morgan MJPEG: it is the hairiest of the lot. PICvideo is probably the most reliable of the software MJPEG codecs with Matrox products.

Do not forget that your hardware was NEVER designed to run under anything later than WIN98. You are trying to run an unmodified E-type Jaguar on 93 octane lead-free petrol. Even if you modify it, the performance will never be the same as it was with the 98 octane leaded petrol it was designed for.

[elviscatMAX]

cheerz brian...it's the way you explain it

Seeins i'm lostin cas that was probally the best way of putting it for me...

I shall give it a go in ME, answer me this though, if i am to gt this working and recording in ME, which one of heVideo tools do i use, i guess in need one with the Record button working to start with...which one is this....?

-KEV-

[Brian Ellis]

Kev

1.52 works fine in W98SE. Cannot say for ME because it's a bit of a bastard OS, not one thing nor another.

[stolbovoy]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
Do not forget that your hardware was NEVER designed to run under anything later than WIN98. You are trying to run an unmodified E-type Jaguar on 93 octane lead-free petrol. Even if you modify it, the performance will never be the same as it was with the 98 octane leaded petrol it was designed for.

There is nothing in hardware that makes writing device driver for Win2000 impossible. It's just 'nice' Matrox policy to force people to buy new hardware.

I have dedicated computer (Cel 300a, ABIT BX6, 256MB RAM, 1 GB slow HDD, 100 MB Ethernet, Mystique + RRS) which I use only for working with such 'obsolete' devices. I've got this machine for free (excluding case, 2 network cards and crossover CAT-5 cable)after couple of upgrades.
BTW, RRS working perfectly capturing through 100 MB Ethernet

[elviscatMAX]

What OS ?

What OS ?

[stolbovoy]

Win98 on 'obsolete' machine, Win2K on 'main' machine

[paulw]

Did I read the correctly??

You capture on your "obsolete" Win98 PC over a 100Meg LAN connection from your Win2K PC??

[stolbovoy]

Actually I capture from 'obsolete' PC using another PC hard drive.

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by stolbovoy
There is nothing in hardware that makes writing device driver for Win2000 impossible. It's just 'nice' Matrox policy to force people to buy new hardware.

Much as I deplore the situation, you are being too hard on Matrox. They tried very hard, and for a long time, to write W2k drivers and did not succeed. They just bashed their collective heads against a brick wall which was not of their making, but that of the MJPEG chipset maker. Where Matrox came unstuck was not the fact that they failed (it could happen to anyone) but that they then adopted a hardline "hard cheese" position to the current owners of RRS/Marvel rather than to seek an equitable compromise position, even offering a rip-off "alternative price to upgrade" which was higher than the High Street shop price for a new but identical item. If they had offered it at a substantial discount, instead, then the majority of users would have been happy.

[stolbovoy]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis


Much as I deplore the situation, you are being too hard on Matrox. They tried very hard, and for a long time, to write W2k drivers and did not succeed. They just bashed their collective heads against a brick wall which was not of their making, but that of the MJPEG chipset maker. Where Matrox came unstuck was not the fact that they failed (it could happen to anyone) but that they then adopted a hardline "hard cheese" position to the current owners of RRS/Marvel rather than to seek an equitable compromise position, even offering a rip-off "alternative price to upgrade" which was higher than the High Street shop price for a new but identical item. If they had offered it at a substantial discount, instead, then the majority of users would have been happy.

As software engineer I don't see which features of this chip can make Win2k driver development impossible. Also NT4 drivers are available and Win2k has support for the legacy drivers:

"Windows 2000 adds support for Plug and Play, Power Options, and an extension to the Windows NT driver model called the Windows Driver Model (WDM). Windows 2000 can run legacy Windows NT 4 drivers, but because these don't support Plug and Play and Power Options, systems running these drivers will have reduced capabilities in these two areas." (c)Inside Microsoft Windows 2000. D. Solomon, M. Russinovich



OK, let me rephrase it: Matrox doesn't want to allocate funds for the RRS Win2k driver development.
Matrox had one more alternative: make source code of RRS driver available for download. I bet we would already have 'alternative' solution in this case .

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by stolbovoy

OK, let me rephrase it: Matrox doesn't want to allocate funds for the RRS Win2k driver development.

I'm sorry, wrong again. Matrox spent a fortune trying to do it.

They told me it couldn't be done

With a smile I went right to it,

I tackled that job that couldn't be done -

And couldn't do it!

(Ogden Nash)

OK, Here's an idea. As you can apparently do what they failed to do with their whole software team over at least 12 month's work, make them an offer. They would probably jump at the chance, provided they paid you only on results!