From: vailm00@DMI.USherb.CA (MARC VAILLANCOURT)
Subject: Re: Domino Graphics Board from Germany
Organization: Universite de Sherbrooke -- Dept. d'Informatique
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:21:28 GMT

-> -OmniBus: some kind of BridgeBoard, but without CPU, that allows 
-> to use   PC cards with Amiga drivers. The first option is a VGA 
-> card (Intuition   hack available) and Ethercards etc. are supposed 
-> to be on the way.   Dave Haynie bought one of those.
 
   Does anybody have more information about the availability of this board?

   I tried Email-ing the conceptor of that board with the address that Dave
provided but haven't got any reply so far. For those who may have missed the
original thread about this very interesting option, here it is:

Subject: Re: Omnibus video solution                                            
Date: 7 Jan 93 17:59:34 GMT                                                    
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA                                      
Keywords: Omnibus, video, Amiga, A3000, availability                           
                                                                               
In article <17935@pitt.UUCP> gwalborn@cs.pitt.edu (Gary Walborn) writes:       
>Ok, I am very interested in this Omnibus video card for the Amiga (thanks     
>for the info, Dave).  Now the big question.... Where can I get one? How       
>much to they cost?  Does anyone know of a vendor for this product?  I am      
>REALLY curious now!                                                           
                                                                               
I don't know of anyone distributing it in the USA yet.  The card's inventor,   
Oliver Bausch, has recently managed to get a net address, so I suggest at this 
point that interested parties write him.  The address is:                      
                                                                               
obausch@green.t-informatik.ba-stuttgart.de                                     
                                                                               
For those who missed it, the oMniBus is what we call a "dumb Bridge Card"      
(I think Jeff Porter coined the phase) with special support for video.  This   
card bridges between the Zorro and ISA buses, but it contains no CPU, just     
bus translation logic and some relays.  The relays act as a software controller
A/B switch for video.  The outputs from a VGA and your Amiga go in, you        
monitor connects to the output of the oMniBus card.                            
                                                                               
The software is the real key here.  The card comes with two libraries,         
"isa.library" and "ivga.library", a 2.0-style Monitor file called "c5",        
and an IVGAPrefs preferences editor.  The "isa.library" is apparently the      
Zorro to ISA bus management code, and the "ivga.library" is the VGA card       
management code.  Anyway, you set things up and then fire up the IVGAPrefs     
program.  This lets you set the desired scan rate for each of the supported    
VGA resolutions (mainly 640x480 through 1280x1024 with the TSENG card I        
have).  When you run the ScreenMode prefs, those resolutions you've enabled    
here show up as standard Amiga display modes.  Anything that lets you supply   
a screen mode (Workbench, for example) can now run on the VGA display.  The    
oMniBus knows when its supposed to be displaying, so when you select Amiga     
generated screens, the A/B switch kicks over to the Amiga's output.            
                                                                               
There's also a utility to display "hi-color" pictures (16-bit direct), and     
they're working on some screen promotion tools and some other devices that     
can be managed on the ISA bus.  I always looked at the ISA bus as being more   
important for this kind of thing (eg, cheap, standard hardware) than for       
PClone emulation, so I'm glad something like this is finally out and in my     
system (it's not the only one, I know about the Golden Gate board too, but     
the really cool part of oMniBus is all of Oliver's software).                  
                                                                               
--                                                                             
Dave Haynie / Commodore Technology, High-End Amiga Systems Design (cool stuff)
==============================================================================


	Marc