PML LOGODisplay Driver Software

For the Picasso II Graphics Board


Two similar display driver systems are available for the Picasso II. Which one you should use depends largely on your needs, but also on the size of your pocket book. Both provide a standard Intuition interface, complete with screen dragging and everything a "native" Amiga screen would offer (except for video output.) These two are the "standard" software that ships with the Picasso, and the CyberGraphX software, which is commercial:

"Standard" (Village Tronic) Picasso Drivers

The latest official release from Village Tronic is Picasso 2.52, dated July 1994. Frank Mariak and some others, who had already left Village Tronic, worked the remaining serious bugs out of the software, resulting in Picasso 2.56. Together with the other two major software components, the final software is: The software is stable, has no serious bugs (to my knowledge), and will suffice in most cases. It supports 5, 6, 7, and 8 bit screens in chunky mode (faster, non-planar storage of image data.)

Picasso II Development Status

The following is an unverified statement, apparently from someone at Village Tronic regarding the future of the Picasso's "standard" software drivers (lines preceded with ">" are quoted from the person who inquired of Village Tronic about the status): 
> I own a PicassoII graphics card, and am wondering if there will
> be any new drivers released for it in the near future?

I apologize, software-devlopment for the Picasso-II has been stopped,
because we are now concentrating on developing our new Picasso-IV and
MacPicasso.

> I have the PicassoII software drivers from early 1994.

The last drivers have been released in August 1994.
These are the actual versions:
Picasso-Monitorfile: V2.51
vilintuisupp.library: V2.9
village.library: V2.58

With kind regards,

Holger Bumke
This probably comes as no surprise to anyone. The set of drivers that Mr. Bumke (Vertriebsleiter von VillageTronic; Manager of VilageTronic) quotes are the lates official drivers. As mentioned above, Mr. Mariak and other, fixed several problems with these drivers and released versions that culminated in Picasso 2.56 (monitor driver.)

CyberGraphX Picasso II Drivers

The CyberGraphX software is the most widely supported RTG (ReTargetable Graphics) "standard" for the Amiga. From the latest announcements and developments, it may even become the future RTG Standard for the Amiga! (it's a rumor, really; don't take it as if I actually know anything!!)

The software differs from the "standard" picasso software in that all screens are always maintained in chunky mode. The benefit is a simpler, faster, (and probably somewhat more reliable) maintenance of screen data. The disadvantage is that even a 1 bitplane (2 color) screen uses the same amount of RAM as an 8 bitplane (256 color) screen. This makes the CyberGraphX software somewhat less attractive to systems strapped for memory, but it's not like you cannot use the "standard" Picasso drivers if that is the case.

CyberGraphX is anywhere from slightly to significantly faster than the "standard" Picasso software, so if you can spare the money and the memory, you stand something to gain from the switch.

CyberGraphX also supports 16bit (65536, "64K" color) and 24bit (16.7 Million color) screens for Intuition, which is a bit of a hack and will not work as quickly (larger amount of data to be managed for such screens) but is certainly a neat and useful feature if such "deep color" displays fit your need.

Click here for downloading any of these driver packages.

Maintained by Udo Schuermann <walrus@uga.umd.edu>
Last updated 15 Jul 1996 and accessed 1,203 times since 7 Oct 1996.

Picasso Home Page