Nth Engine

[RetroCAD]

Greetings all - 

I am on the hunt for an Nth Engine graphics card. This is a video that provided hardware zooming for AutoCAD 2.5/2.62/9. The model I had connected to the monitor via 5 BNC connectors. If you see or know of one, please let me know!

 

[ReMark]

I not only remember the Nth Engine graphics card I had such a card at one time.  The feature you refer to required the use of a dongle as I recall.   You're talking around 1985. 

[RetroCAD]

You, that’s what I’m after. I used the Nth cards until SoftEngine was released.

[DavidOBM]

david.watterston@cdsurveys.com

 

Hi we have one and the user manual ... what are you offering as they were really expensive in the ‘day’ ... cheers if you give me your email address I’ll send you a photo. We happily used it a number of years ago with Eclipse before we moved to the survey processing suite Geosite and now N4ce..

[BIGAL]

What about a Number 9 graphics card pretty sure same era.

[ReMark]

On 11/12/2019 at 9:50 AM, RetroCAD said:

You, that’s what I’m after. I used the Nth cards until SoftEngine was released.

As I recall we paid close to $3,000 for the Nth Engine graphics card and SoftEngine.  Probably a quarter of the cost of our "high end" computer at the time.

[RetroCAD]

23 hours ago, DavidOBM said:

david.watterston@cdsurveys.com

 

Hi we have one and the user manual ... what are you offering as they were really expensive in the ‘day’ ... cheers if you give me your email address I’ll send you a photo. We happily used it a number of years ago with Eclipse before we moved to the survey processing suite Geosite and now N4ce..

 

I would love to see that card! My email is retrocad@facilitynow.com

 

Many thanks!

[RetroCAD]

Pretty excited to have not one but two Nth Engine cards. Hopefully I can get these running in the coming months. Hats off to the CADTutor.net Forum!

[f700es]

Dang at the size of those! Also...lol

 

[RetroCAD]

Very cool! Where did you find this?

[f700es]

32 minutes ago, RetroCAD said:

Very cool! Where did you find this?

Just googled Nth Engine cards. I never knew these existed. I love the 1024x768 w/16 colors for $4k

[ReMark]

Yeah, those cards were massive.  As it turns out I was only 3/4's right on the price.  Since we had the 1024x768 nth Engine card we must have paid the full $4k.  I ran a 21" Viewsonic color monitor using the nth Engine card to display the graphics and a 12" amber monitor for text.  

 

Did you get the dongle as well to run the software?

Edited February 27, 2020 by ReMark

[RetroCAD]

2 hours ago, ReMark said:

Yeah, those cards were massive.  As it turns out I was only 3/4's right on the price.  Since we had the 1024x768 nth Engine card we must have paid the full $4k.  I ran a 21" Viewsonic color monitor using the nth Engine card to display the graphics and a 12" amber monitor for text.  

 

Did you get the dongle as well to run the software?

As far as I recall there wasn’t a dongle for the driver software. The card itself is a massive dongle!

[ReMark]

I was referring to the program called Soft Engine that came with the car.

[RetroCAD]

Fwiw, SoftEngine was made by a different company - Vibrant Graphics. Although in one of the unlocked versions I have, SoftEngine directly supports a few of the later-model Nth cards, such as the Nth/150.

[fstilo]

Greetings to everyone. I have a NTH graphics card named 3D Display Controller. The card is very beautiful and is also equipped with an expansion module. Unfortunately I don't have the drivers and the manual, also I haven't found any documentation related to this NTH for 16 bit ISA slot. I hope, with your help, to get the card up and running on my IBM 5170. Greetings from Italy to all friends of the forum, and to RetroCAD for the interesting recovery work of these graphic technology jewels. F.

[BIGAL]

I remember selling a PC with this card it was so far ahead of its time had hardware zoom plus other features. A zoom magnify glass if I remember correct. The Pc was like $15k all up 24" monitor.  Needed 2 people to carry it.

 

I would like to say could help but I am sorry like 30 years ago.

[ReMark]

I had a CAD computer custom built using the nth Engine graphics card which at the time retailed for $4,000.  My system had two monitors though.  A 24 inch one for graphics (in color) and a 15 inch one for text (monochrome).

[fstilo]

Thanks a lot for the replies. Could you tell me what is the difference between the "normal" NTH engine and this one, called "3D display controller"? Would it be a 16-bit evolution of the same card? What kind of color monitors were used then? Thank you!

[Nth Engineer]

Found this late in the conversation, but the 3D Display Controller was based on a different processor called a Transputer.  I was the person who wrote the base code for this device as well as wrote Hydra which would take in 3D AutoCAD drawings and render them from wireframe to solid.  Additionally, you hook 3 of this up together to get 3 processors tripling the speed ($12K).