Using the Pinnacle (Miro) Studio DC10 Plus with Win NT 4 or later.

[Richard Spann]

Here's my 2 cents about the situation with the Pinnacle (Miro) DC10
Plus card and Windows NT.

I bought the DC10+ last week at Comp USA for about $153.00 (including
tax and my corporate discount) fully knowing that no drivers were
included for Windows NT.

I run NT 4 sp 5 both at home and at work. I'm an automation specialist
at a biopharmaceutical R&D firm, and I do support for $$$ on the side.
So, I felt, with my range of experience, I could figure something
out.

The DC10+ chip set is similar to the Iomega Buz (Zoran/Philips
chipset). I am unable to acquire the NT driver for Buz that made it to
beta release, due to NDA issues. I believe the Buz driver will work.
Anyone reading this that has a relationship with Iomega, is there some
clause in the NDA that will permit you posting the drivers only-- no
source code?

I have seen posts reporting that the DC30 Plus Windows 9x drivers will
work with the DC10 series unders Windows 9x. That seems to be real. A
check of the properties for the DC30+ Win 9x driver files showed the
drivers were designed for the entire DCxx series of cards.

The DC30+ Windows NT driver, though, was a different story. I could
not get it to load. Kept giving a message about no valid devices
found. The driver properties stated that the driver was for the DC30.
No co-listing of the DC10/DC20/DC50 etc. No BSOD, at least.

I did manage to get another Pinnacle Windows NT device driver to load
and start the DC10+ service, however. The problem here was that I
could not see the card as a pci entry in NT Diagnostics nor did the
card show up in the control panel as a video capture device. I do not
think it is a good idea to divulge the driver name until I get it
fully functional with the DC10+. Any suggestions are welcome.

I next seriously considered doing a dual boot system between NT and
Win 98. Win 98 for capture and NT for everything else, using the DC30
applications.

Here is another possible source for a compatible driver. The Videum
card I believe uses the Philips/Zoran chipset. I visited the Videum
site and they do have an NT driver. But there is something weird about
their FTP server. I could not attach to it.

Not to worry because the Winnov company sells the Videum cards. I was
able to download NT driver files for the Videum cards. I will try them
with NT and the DC10+. Be warned, I came across a Microsoft kb article
about an NT bug with Winnov video capture products. The resolution was
to download the latest driver from Winnov.

Since I am planning to install Windows 2000, I will try the DC10+
Windows 98 drivers. In theory, this should work. From what I
undertsand, drivers for Windows 98 and Windows 2000 are SUPPOSED to
adhere to the Windows Driver Model (WDM). If Pinncale coded the DC10+
Win 9x drivers to WDM specs, then the drivers on the disk should work
under Win 2k. I wonder what would happen if the DC30+ drivers were
tried? Version 1.41 at the Pinnacle site is W2k beta. Anyway, it says
on the outside of the DC10+ package that 98 is supported.

Actually, the Miro drive performance util is pretty cool :-)

[Carl Goossens]

I don't believe you will ever get a driver for another card to work with
the dc10 + card. Even though they use the same chips, they may use a
different architecture. The best chances are the DC30 NT drivers. The old
DC10 card is actually a DC30 card with the sound part missing. I'm pretty
sure that, if you can patch the driver so that it accepts the dc10 card Id
as a DC30, the driver will work with the old DC10. The new DC10+ card is a
different story. This card is not the same as the DC30 range and there
will be no support for it in the nt driver.
By the way, I think you can pacht miro instant video the same way.

Carl Goossens

[Edwin van Eck]

Hi,

I have used the DC30+ windows 95 drivers on my (old) DC10 card.
The drivers recognised the card and worked good.
The strange thing, was after I bought a new computer (Pentium II-350) I had
problems with outputting the video to my TV...
This was solved by installing the new DC10+ software
on the DC10 card.

/Edwin van Eck
Digital Video Editing Site: http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/EdwinVanEck/

Carl Goossens <carlgo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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