Tim Roberts, CCP Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

I'm a partner in Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc., a technology consulting company in Tigard, Oregon, specializing in multimedia hardware and driver development. P&B does chip and board design, design reviews, performance analysis and driver development for all versions of Windows, from the antiques to the modern, including Windows CE. This includes display drivers, video capture drivers, audio drivers, video codecs, DirectX HALs, WDM drivers, USB drivers, filter drivers, and more. We have also done Linux and XFree86 driver development; the XFree86 3.x and 4.x drivers for the S3 Savage chips are my work. We have also done Trimedia development, and 8051 firmware.

If you're looking for my web page about the XFree86 drivers for the Savage and ProSavage chips, look here:

• XFree86 3.3.6
• XFree86 4.x

I've started a weblog. It's a combination of political commentary and diary entries. Here's my old blog.

P&B developed the once-popular MediaStones benchmark, the first true multimedia benchmark, and still the only benchmark to measure quality as well as quantity. We were responsible for the Cinepak codec for Video For Windows.

So, what's a "CCP", you ask? Good question. There is an organization called the Institute for the Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP) that has been trying for more than a quarter of a century to establish some kind of certification model for programmers and analysts, similar to the CPA model for accountants. "CCP" means I have a Certificate in Computer Programming from the ICCP. The fact that I have to explain this every time I say it indicates what a dismal failure their attempt has been.

Every time I tell that story, my business partner jokes that he is "Lee Boekelheide, LAN". That's LAN as in "Letters After Name". I don't get any respect.

In one of my other lives, I accompany choirs and choir students, and play in the pit orchestra for local school musicals. Here is my current list of credits:

Date	Show	Group	Instrument
03/1975	Fiddler on the Roof	DDHS	clarinet
03/1976	Show Boat	DDHS	clarinet
04/2007	Pirates of Penzance	WLWV	clarinet
04/2008	Annie Get Your Gun	WLWV	clarinet
02/2010	Grease	TuHS	piano
04/2010	Beauty and the Beast	WLWV	clarinet
10/2010	Les Miserables	TuHS	piano
04/2011	Bye Bye Birdie	WLWV	piano
10/2011	Seussical	TuHS	piano
04/2012	Pirates of Penzance	WLWV	piano
02/2013	Hello Dolly!	TuHS	piano
04/2013	Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat	WLWV	piano
11/2013	You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown	TuHS	piano
04/2014	Footloose	WLWV	piano
02/2015	Peter Pan	TuHS	piano
04/2015	Shrek	WLWV	Sinfonia
02/2016	South Pacific	TuHS	piano
04/2016	Grease	WLWV	piano
02/2017	Shrek	TuHS	piano
04/2017	Beauty and the Beast	WLWV	piano
11/2017	Once Upon a Mattress	TuHS	piano
04/2018	Bye Bye Birdie	WLWV	piano
11/2018	Little Mermaid	TuHS	piano
04/2019	High School Musical	WLWV	piano
11/2019	Cinderella	TuHS	piano
04/2020	Willy Wonka (canceled)	WLWV	piano
11/2021	Newsies!	LOHS	piano
04/2022	Seussical	WLWV	piano
05/2022	Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat	TuHS	piano
06/2022	Ranked	BHS	piano
03/2023	Little Shop of Horrors	TuHS	piano
04/2023	Little Mermaid	WLWV	piano
07/2023	Willy Wonka Jr	WLWV	piano
04/2024	Newsies	WLWV	piano
05/2024	Addam's Family	TuHS	keyboard

DDHS = David Douglas High School
LOHS = Lake Oswego High School
WLWV = West Linn/Wilsonville Middle School Musical
TuHS = Tualatin High School
BHS = Beaverton High School

Here is my obligatory list of miscellaneous web links:

• Send me mail! (as if I needed more e-mail.)
• Check out some personal information about me.
• Click here to meet my dog. Millie is a soft-coated wheaten terrier.
• Click here to meet my other dog. Abby is a toy poodle.
• Click here to see my new weblog.
• www.probo.com is the P&B corporate web site. P&B offers a wide variety of consulting services. We have traditionally done display, graphics, video and multimedia chips, boards and drivers for all flavors of Windows (95/98, NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10, CE). We've also done XFree86 X server drivers.
• Request a copy of MediaStones. Please include your name, address, e-mail address and telephone number in your request.
• The Tualatin Valley Community Band is an all-volunteer group that meets once a week to do something entirely unrelated to computers. If you've had a band instrument sitting untouched in your closet since college, go check out the web page.

As a "public service", you can download the most recent versions of several of the products we have supported in the past from this very page. All of these are ZIP files. Note that we do not promise free support for these products any more, but we are always open to discuss consulting contracts for particularly sticky issues.

spigot.zip (76kB)( via FTP)
spigot.zip (76kB) (via HTTP)
This is a Win95-capable driver for the VideoSpigot video capture card from either SuperMac or Creative Labs. The cards are identical; Creative just took over manufacture and distribution of the VideoSpigot from SuperMac. The driver that shipped with the VideoSpigot depended on a feature of Windows 3.1 which was dropped in Win95. You are on your own with this driver -- many people have reported complete success, but some users have simply been unable to mate the VideoSpigot to their Win9X systems.

cvid16.zip (41kB) (via FTP)
cvid16.zip (41kB) (via HTTP)
This is the 16-bit version of the Cinepak codec for Windows, version 1.10.0.11. This codec runs under Windows 3.1 and offers some performance improvements over the standard codec shipped with VFW.

cvid32.zip (40kB) (via FTP)
cvid32.zip (40kB) (via HTTP)
This is the 32-bit version of the Cinepak codec for Windows, version 1.10.0.11. This codec runs under any 32-bit version of Windows, 9X or NT. If you're running a video card with any video acceleration at all, you should download this driver. The 32-bit Cinepak which ships with Win95, NT, and DirectX 1 to 3 does not support decompression directly to YUV surfaces. Versions 1.10 and above DO support YUV surfaces.

NOTE, however, that all of the newer operating systems (98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003) include Cinepak 1.10.0.12, which is practically identical to this one, as does any version of DirectX greeater than 4. Thus, it is virtually certain that you do not NEED to install Cinepak yourself. If, despite this warning, you stubbornly decide that you want to install it, here's how. The OEMSETUP.INF file in the zip is designed for the older systems. For the newer systems, just copy iccvid.dll to your \winnt\system32 or \windows\system32 directory, and run this registry script (or you can get it via FTP).

aims.zip (121kB) (via FTP)
aims.zip (121kB) (via HTTP)
This is an NT 4 Video For Windows capture driver for the AIMS Labs Video Highway Xtreme 98, a Bt848-based video capture card. AIMS Labs went out of business in mid-1999, leaving all of its customers with orphaned products. This is a shame; they made good cards, with excellent international TV format support, and their custom apps were well done.

I didn't keep a copy of their applications, but Brandon Strickland kindly sent me a copy of his CD, and I have zipped up the contents of it here as vhx98.zip; it's about 317MB. There is absolutely no support available for this driver. It can be made to work in Windows 2000, although not through the standard control panel.

However, rather than make you wade through these old drivers, let me make another suggestion that will make you much happier. There is a publicly available, well-tested, open source, WDM driver for any Bt848/878 card you can mention, including specific support for the VHX. It works on 98SE, ME, 2K, and XP. Go to btwincap.sourceforge.net and look around. There is a self-installing binary-only release that should do everything you need it to do.