ev1 and cosmo1

By Chris Pirazzi. Many thanks to the holders of the sacred knowledge: Greg Poist and Grant Dorman.

This document explains the different flavors and capabilities of the following boards:

Be warned---it is not for the faint of heart.

Taxonomy of the ev1's

Ev1 is our name for all boards that identify themselves in the VL as "ev1." These boards all use the underlying design known as "Galileo 1.0" or "Express Video." This document explains exactly which boards this is, and their differences.

Because an ev1 board offers video->graphics and graphics->video functionality, whether or not your box can support an ev1 may depend on what kind of graphics option you have.

This document describes the full set of available input jacks for each board. It does not go into which jacks can be used simultaneously.

The names of weird connectors you may find on the ev1's:

The names of the weird dongles associated with ev1:

A given ev1 board supports one of the following sets of analog inputs:

  1. "simple analog jacks:" 2 composite in, 1 svideo in, 1 composite out, 1 svideo out
  2. "full-featured analog jacks:" all the connectors on an ABOB (a superset of the "simple analog jacks")
A given ev1 board's analog support falls into one of three categories:
  1. "simple analog jacks right on the board:" the board has the 5 simple jacks right on the edge of the board.
  2. "simple analog jacks via dongle:" the board itself has an "analog breakout connector." you can plug either junior or ABOB into the board, and in either case, you'll get access to the 5 simple analog jacks (the other jacks on ABOB just won't work). these boards are shipped with junior. one ugly bug: due to a wiring bug, if you ask the VL for composite input 2, you'll get the jack labeled composite input 2 on junior, but you'll get the jack labeled composite input 3 on ABOB. sigh. (you cannot ask these boards for composite input 3 since they only do the 5 simple jacks).
  3. "full-featured analog jacks via dongle:" the board itself has an "analog breakout connector." you can plug either junior or ABOB into the board, and all of the jacks of the dongle you've plugged in will work. these boards are shipped with ABOB. one ugly bug: if you ask the VL for composite input 3, you'll get the jack labeled composite input 3 on ABOB, but the jack labeled composite input 2 on junior. if you ask the VL for composite input 2, you'll get the jack labeled composite input 2 on ABOB and you will get no jack on junior. sigh.
A given ev1 board's digital support falls into one of three categories:
  1. no digital connectors
  2. one "indycam connector"
  3. one "ribbon cable connector"
A board that has a digital connector supports some combination of the following features:
  1. 601 digital video i/o via DBOB (which has an "indycam connector")
  2. IndyCam input via an "indycam connector"
  3. digital video i/o with a cosmo1 board via an "indycam connector" or a "ribbon cable connector"
A cosmo1 board must be used with an ev1 board in order to input or output video data at full rate (50/60 fields per second. Depending on the board, this may either be accomplished using a "ribbon cable connector" or an "indycam connector." In addition, many flavors of cosmo have an additional external "indycam connector" which will let you hook up both cosmo1 and DBOB, or both cosmo1 and IndyCam, if the ev1 board can support the combination. We will say more about cosmo1 in the cosmo1 section below.

Also, as you will see under "Indy Box" below, it is possible to hook up a DBOB to an ev1 board that only has a "ribbon cable connector" via an adapater card, which exposes an "indycam connector" outside the box.

Indigo Box

  1. Indigo Video

    The p1 (beta) version of this board, a beta version shipped to almost no customers, looks like this:

    The p2 rev of this board, shipped to most customers and supported, looks like this:

Indy Box

  1. Indy Video

  2. Indy Video 601

Indigo 2 Box

  1. Indigo2 Video

  2. Galileo Video

  3. Indigo2 Video for Impact

Note: "Indigo2 Video for Impact" is a different product from "Impact Video for Indigo2". The latter is an ev3-based ("Impact Video," "Galileo 1.5," and "impact" are other names for ev3) product, a completely different design.

Taxonomy of the cosmo1's

Cosmo1 is our name for all boards sold by SGI as "Cosmo Compress." These boards all use the underlying design known as "Cosmo 1.0." The cosmo1's are somewhat more consistent than the ev1's.

All cosmo1 boards contain the same JPEG input and output functionality. Some boards are able to do memory->memory decompression and compression faster than others, but none can do this task at 50/60 fields per second. Similarly, none of the ev1 flavors can do video->memory or memory->video at full rate (though "Indigo2 Video for Impact" gets close for output). In order to get full speed, one needs to use a cosmo1 board in this way:

Compression: one uses a "video->cosmo->memory" configuration. Video is brought in through an ev1 board. the ev1 board sends the digitized video directly to cosmo1 over an "indycam connector" or a "ribbon cable connector," and cosmo1 compresses the data and places JPEG data in memory.

Decompression: one uses a "memory->cosmo->video" configuration. cosmo1 grabs JPEG data out of memory and decompresses it into a digital video signal. This signal is connected directly to an ev1 board via an "indycam connector" or a "ribbon cable connector." The ev1 board then makes the signal availble at all of its outputs.

We only support cosmo1 boards in systems which also have an ev1 board. The main differences between the cosmo1 boards lie in how they connect to ev1 and whether or not they can also connect to a DBOB or an IndyCam. These are explained below.

If you have ev1 and cosmo1 in your system, you can set up a video->memory path through ev1 (that is, you can bring in uncompressed video which is untouched by cosmo) from any input jack at all--cosmo does not prevent ev1 from accessing any input jacks. However, there is a separate question: if you have an ev1 and cosmo1 in your system and you wish to set up a video->cosmo->memory path, what input jacks can you now use? Due to some hardware constraints, there are some input jacks that are not available to cosmo. At the time of this writing, this includes only the second digital input of DBOB.

Again remember that this document only discusses the use of one jack and one board at a time. There may be more constraints than what we have specified here if you try and use a particular jack in an ev1 video->memory path while you are also using cosmo.

Indigo Box

  1. Cosmo Compress for Indigo

Indy Box

  1. Cosmo Compress for Indy

Indigo 2 Box

  1. Cosmo Compress for Indigo2