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Delfina "Flipper Edition"
Soundcard for Amiga 1200
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Please note: The Flipper Interface has never been released, so the
Delfina Flipper Edition is only usable with Amiga 1200 and 100% compatible
clockports.
The soundcard Delfina "Flipper Edition" is a cooperation of
individual computers (Germany) with the developer team of Petsoff (Finland).
The hardware design was licensed and improved by far. All known features of
the Delfina Plus remain:
- DSP56002, 73,7Mhz, 96KByte memory, 12ns speed
- Codec: 16 bit, 48khz (other frequencies were played back by re-sampling)
- Outputs: Stereo-RCA
- Inputs: 2x Stereo-RCA, CD-input internally
- Interface: 16-Bit Zorro-II
- recording and playback Simultaneously (full duplex)
- AHI-drivers with an unlimited amount of virtual channels
You think this is already impressive? There is nothing that can't be improved!
Since re-sampling may cause drawbacks in sound quality, the Delfina Flipper can playback
standard frequencies (32khz and 44.1khz) without the need to re-sample, thus having no
loss in sound quality.
The original Delfina was delivered with a 66Mhz DSP, overclocked to 73.7 Mhz. Since the
revised version does not use the technique of re-sampling any more, overclocking was reduced
to a moderate degree to make the Delfina work reliably in all enviroments. Despite the
reduction to 67,73 Mhz, more calculation power is left for the user, because re-sampling
is not necessary.
Delfina Flipper is split into two cards. The "Delfina module" carries the
digital signal processor, memory and the analog inputs and outputs. This module has two
interfaces to the computer: One clock-port for the A1200, and a 26-pin expansion port
that is available on all of individual computers' Zorro cards. With these interfaces,
the module is ready to be used with nearly every classic Amiga!
There are a lot of sound connectors: Three stereo inputs with regular sensitivity,
and one stereo input with increased sensitivity for a microphone. The output is not
using mini stereo connectors as most other soundcards do, but RCA connectors, because
these allow a better sound quality.
The second board is the so-called "Flipper-interface". It uses technology
known from the Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper: The board can
be used in a classic Amiga, as well as in a PCI slot.
The Delfina module is simply attached to the Flipper interface. This expands the
Delfina with SP-DIF connectors that allow digital connection to HiFi devices like DAT,
Minidisc and CD-Recorders. Musicians will like the MIDI connectors: One MIDI-in and one
MIDI-out can be programmed independently of each other.
The Zorro interface has been re-designed from scratch. With the Delfina Flipper it is
shown for the first time that the slightly outdated Zorro bus can do much more than the
engineers at Commodore have intended when they developed the bus system: the performance
was simply doubled. With usual values of about 5.2MB/second (theoretical value 7MB/second),
it's possible to playback more AHI channels than any other soundcard did before. In
full-duplex mode (record and playback at the same time) this data rate can be split, but
if you only record, the known limits apply to the Delfina Flipper. Of course, this
performance is only reached with a 68020 or higher processor.
The clockport of the A1200 cannot reach the data performance of the Zorro-bus,
but it's still fast enough to playback several AHI channels, and of course to playback
MP3 files. A player-program that can output this popular audio format at best quality
is included. That means that with the Delfina Flipper, the MP3 module is already included
in the price!
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