[pbechard]

Hey. I bought an intous 9x12 a few years ago, back then I didint know much about computers, so i ended up buying the serial port version. Does anybody know the difference in refresh rate / performance between the serial version opposed to the usb? or mabey some program that speed up the refresh rate on the serial version (or if wacom does free upgrades? ) ? i tried a graphire usb at work, and for some reason it seemed better.
thanks for your time.
-paul

[Loki]

Free upgrades from Wacom???? Hahahaha...hahaha... phew ... thanks for the laugh ...

now:

yes, USB is faster and there's no way to speed up the serial port, since it's (very old)hardware. USB has waaaayyy more throughput and additionally, since it's powered, you don't get additional clutter with the power supply you need with the serial one ...

You might have to bite the bullet and get a USB tablet.
If you get an Intuos, you'll have a tablet with a higher resolution and a better pen. But the Graphire is good too - it's resolution is the same than the old ArtZ-II's but I believe it got a nicer pen than the ArtZ ...


wheeeee!

[ June 05, 2002: Message edited by: Loki ]

[Torstein Nordstrand]

Hey there Paul, if you think the the serial port is holding your tablet back, maybe you should try using a Serial to Usb Converter? The tablet hardware is probably the same in both the usb and serial versions, so it should work. You don't think it's due to the machine at work being more powerful?

[pbechard]

Also is there a large performance increase between the intuos1 and intuos2 boards?

[balistic]

There is no performance difference between the serial and USB versions of the same tablet. The refresh rate is determined by the processing power of the tablet, and not the computer or port you're using. The older Intuos tablets did about 50 Hz, the new Intuos2 does around 66 Hz.

[Pat]

The Mac version of the serial tablet uses an ADB connector (Apple Desktop Bus) and it is slower than the USB versions of the same tablet due to the limited bandwidth. To get around this Wacom Engineers are compressing the data sent from the tablet. As might be expected, this allows the tablet to operate normally under the bandwidth limitation, but the compression/decompression does cause a performance hit.

I'd be willing to bet the serial port on the PC tablet has a similar problem. BTW, the serial to USB adapters work well on the Mac tablets, but I think Wacom drivers are keyed to use or not use the compression based on the tablet internal hardware, not your current connection. I know tablets are hardwired with version numbers and connection type, all of which are reflected in the serial number. For instance, I'm using an ArtZII ADB tablet for the Mac. My model number is UD-0608-A. The A stands for ADB connector. I suspect the driver software retrieves this information and compressess accordingly. I happen to own 4 of those tablets, some of which are using native ADB ports and some are using adapters. All of them perform at roughly the same -and IMO all of them feel slightly less responsive than native USB tablets.

-Pat

[Torstein Nordstrand]

Here's what I found on Wacom

Quote:
"The Wacom Serial tablets can be used with a Serial to USB adapter. Wacom has tested the Keyspan (http://www.keyspan.com) Serial to USB adapter.
If you have a Macintosh tablet with an ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) interface (the tablet model number will end in "A"), the iMate USB to ADB adapter from Griffin Techonlogy (http://www.griffintechnology.com) will work to adapt the tablet to USB."

I also found this very interesting parlour on
a page of the Wacom Forums:

Quote:
Q: "When you paint FAST in Photoshop (even Photoshop4), you get straight lines instead of round curves!"

Official A: "The reason is the speed of Photoshop's graphic engine, which is not sufficient in cases, where one paints very fast. Compare with Painter (Classic) and you'll see that it works fine there. However, Wacom is working close together with Adobe to improve tablet input performance with Photoshop."

That's an official reply... I thought it was just Painter smoothing strokes by adding points inbetween the inputt'ed dots?

[LoTekK]

quote:

---

Q: "When you paint FAST in Photoshop (even Photoshop4), you get straight lines instead of round curves!"

Official A: "The reason is the speed of Photoshop's graphic engine, which is not sufficient in cases, where one paints very fast. Compare with Painter (Classic) and you'll see that it works fine there. However, Wacom is working close together with Adobe to improve tablet input performance with Photoshop."

---

now there's a bullshit answer if i ever heard one... you're right in saying that painter smoothes the strokes by interpolation... notice that ps 7 has a new "smoothing" option... the real reason is the intuos' refresh rate of 50hz (or intuos2's 66hz, as balistic mentioned)... there's another thread here that talks about this, too...

i know some of the cheaper, non-wacom, tablets do 100hz, and i remember reading that the reason for the intuos' relatively low refresh rate is the fact that it requires no batteries for the pen... the way it works, iirc, is that the tablet has to send data to the pen to be "bounced" back to it, effectively cutting refresh rate in half, a problem not present in cheaper tablets with battery-powered pens since the pen sends out the data... or something to that effect...

but yeah, that wacom answer is a bullshit one...

[Wolfy]

Photoshop 7 lost pressure sensitivity with me as well.. Restored it by manually starting & stopping the tabletservice

Do save you work before you stop the service!!

on W2K Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Services -> Tablet Service.

I didn't close PS7, and it frooze when I stopped the service. After End-Tasking and restarting it, the pressure pressure sensitivity worked.

Info: Dual P2 500 / Wacom Intuos 1 A5 serial / Windows 2000 Pro.