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FrozenGate by Avery

IShow DAC

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carmangary

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Does anyone have the IShow DAC? I will have support for it in my Spaghetti software soon.
 





I´ve been told that the ishow dac and software is the worst piece of shit ever made, so i bought a Norm´s usb FrameStreamer Express 2 dac.
 
I wouldn't go that far. I received one a week or so ago and have been playing with it some. The software that it comes with isn't the greatest but it works. The DAC is pretty basic. Only 8 bit XY and TTL RGB but it has a nice rugged case. Feature wise, the DAC is about the same as Norm's FrameStreamer Express 1 (not 2).

If you want a nice analog DAC, I don't recommend the IShow DAC but if you already have one then you will be able to use it with Spaghetti soon. Also, the price for the IShow package is only $135 with free shipping from some places on Ebay. With it you get the DAC, a ton of ILDA files, a few shows, and the IShow software. If you have a cheap TTL scanner and don't need anything fancy, the IShow stuff is not a bad deal especially since you can use it with Spaghetti.

I currently don't support Norm's DACs by the way.
 
Strange, norm states that the FSX2 works(is compatible) with MambaBlack, HE-Laserscan and Spaghetti on his site, so i assume he have tried all these and that they worked.
 
They work with the old version of Spaghetti (1.8.1.15 and earlier). Norm only has an MLD driver for his DAC. An MLD driver is something that MediaLas created for Mamba and I no longer support those drivers. In the future, I may add support for them again but right now I am not. I have contacted Norm several times to try to work with him to create a non-Mamba driver that I can use but he has shown no interest. I have even offered to write it as long as I got the info I needed. Oh well.

But the short of it is that Spaghetti no longer supports Norm's DACs and his ads are not correct.
 
I got the IShow DAC working with Spaghetti today. :) It works pretty well but not as good as some other DACs. The playback quality with Spaghetti does seem quite a bit better than the playback quality when using it with IShow, though.
 
How about some pictures ? So we can see how well the ishow dac works with spaghetti, compared to the ishow software.
 
This could be a good way for people who dont want to build stuff to try scanners. I'm no longer going to build a sound card dac if this thing is good with spaghetti, will save me a pile of testing and assembly on the argon scanner.

Not to mention its one gadget instead of 3 coming from 3 different places (soundcard from DX, the correction amp, and hunting down laser shows). With this I assume you just connect it up, start spaghetti, do some calibration, turn on your laser, and away you go :)
 
The iShow DAC output is not as good as the soundcard DAC or any other DAC for a couple of reasons:
(1) It only has 8 bit X&Y and TTL color. This would not be so bad except for #2.
(2) The DAC overrides what you send to it and sets its on output speed. Not a bad idea if it worked. But what you end up with is an image with hot spots or sometimes an image that is distorted.

For the price, the iShow DAC isn't bad and if you are mostly into beam shows and don't care too much about the hot spots then it would be acceptible. If the firmware could be hacked (a possibility) then those issues could be resolved, I think.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you know the down sides of the iShow DAC before you go and buy one.
 
Experimentonomen said:
Strange, norm states that the FSX2 works(is compatible) with MambaBlack, HE-Laserscan and Spaghetti on his site, so i assume he have tried all these and that they worked.
Click to expand...

I readded support for the MLD drivers a week or so ago so Norm's DAC should work with Spaghetti now.
 
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