NeXT JPEG Dauthercard

Here is a picture of the Prototype Dimension JPEG Daughter Card Serial (hand written) ACK000001. Right now I have little definative information on the actual history of this card. What I do know is that sometime in 1991-93? timeframe NeXT began this project while also releasing the NeXT Dimension board. The NeXT Dimension was origionally advertised as capable of realtime video compression to Disk @ 30fps. Later as it was painfully becoming clear to NeXT that the C-Cube CL550 wasn't living up to promised performance specs. NeXT subsequent Dimension brochures eliminated this feature. Even so NeXT continued work on trying to make the JPEG daughtercard a reality.

This is one of three surviving prototypes. A number literally burned up due to excessive heat dissipation. This particular board is the closest NeXT got to a working prototype. It will do about 2 cycles of video compression before hanging your system.. :( It is unfortunate that NeXT couldn't wait around for the CL-560 which would have solved all of the 550 problems. Even so one of the main limitations of doing video compression to disk on black hardware was the SCSI bandwidth - which at the time was state of art but still - with existing disks painfully slow (1MB-2MB/sec typical)