Interesting object...

#1 Fri, 6 Mar 2009 - 11:23 68kMLA

At Computer Hardware club at my school a few days ago there appeared a mysterious black box, apparently from nowhere. Close inspection revealed it to have a SCSI hard drive in a removable bay and a FDD, as well as a tiny screen on the front and S-video in and out.

Upon plugging it in and pressing the one obvious button, the tiny screen on the front displayed "Casablanca" and immediately the TV did as well. Hmm..

Google reveals this to be an Amiga-based non-linear video editing system, with a 68060 proc and 16 mb of RAM, as well as a 4gb HD which will be upgraded. More news later as it's found.

#2 Sat, 7 Mar 2009 - 15:53 68kMLA

It works! After connecting it up to a TV and speakers, it displayed its screen. Inspection of the back revealed a serial port and an AT-style keyboard port. We hooked up a mouse and keyboard to these, and it detected and can use them! Found some info here:

http://www.samysdv.com/dra-casa.htm

#3 Sat, 7 Mar 2009 - 15:57 68kMLA

Wow, that thing is way cool. Seems to have cost a pretty penny for the 060 version back in the day, too.

Do you have any intentions of cracking it open and getting lots of board/guts pictures? They'd be much appreciated!

#4 Sat, 7 Mar 2009 - 21:52 68kMLA

Already been cracked open - no pics yet though.

It's got, as the page said, a 68LC060 (the LC was somewhat surprising) and RAM in strange angled sockets. There's a main board and a daughter board, with slots that look more or less like PDS slots for adding more stuff (what precisely I have no idea) The HD is in a removable cradle with a standard USB-looking SCSI jack on the back.

#5 Sat, 7 Mar 2009 - 22:59 68kMLA

It would be interesting to see the guts of that thing.

#6 Sat, 7 Mar 2009 - 23:35 68kMLA

So, apart from editing DV....I wonder what you could actually do with it?

#7 Sun, 8 Mar 2009 - 16:41 68kMLA

Custom hardware, custom ROMs, custom file format: I'm guessing, not much. Strip it for the '060?

I have one of these from an old random conquest too. I had no idea they were Amiga based, let alone 68k :b&w:

#8 Mon, 9 Mar 2009 - 03:48 68kMLA

Hey, the Casablanca! We had one of those in our high school linear video editing lab. Quite an archaic thing to have to use, if I remember rightly.

#9 Mon, 9 Mar 2009 - 10:25 68kMLA

I dunno, it seems to have a very intuitive UI to me...

#10 Wed, 11 Mar 2009 - 10:40 68kMLA

I dunno, it seems to have a very intuitive UI to me...

That's because it runs some form of Amiga OS!

(AFAIK) Mac OS wasn't the only game in town.

And as far as what you can do with it (again, AFAIK): you can run a newer Amiga OS on it, and various software (the kind that don't bang on the hardware directly, aka games) will work with it. So pretty much that means Workbench (equivalent to Finder in Mac terms) applications. I, too, am surprised about the 68LC060, but then again if they took lessons from Commodore (on how to be complete cheap asses) then it probably makes sense. I'm so glad Apple didn't and still doesn't go the cheap ass route.

Nice find! I'm still looking for one myself, to play with.

#11 Thu, 12 Mar 2009 - 03:28 68kMLA

you can run a newer Amiga OS on it, and various software

Note to self: find screwdriver, check for '060