#More Colors Wanted
8 messages in this thread
I have one major reservation about the new Amiga 3000. It seems that
Commodore is moving in the opposite direction from IBM and Apple in terms
of number of displayable colors. This bothers me because I would have
eventually liked to have seen a Bridgeboard with software capable of
operation in an emulated VGA mode. In addition, the "Super Hi-Res" modes
that the 3000 brings are good for monchrome desktop publishing; however,
for CAD and painting applications, more colors would be better (the special
video modes supposedly have only 4 colors or 2 bit planes). I have heard
of some special display boards but I didn't see anything about them at the
World of Amiga. Also, I would want the display capability to be standard
for both software compatability reasons and cost.
I'm a bit confused by this message. How do you feel that CBM is moving in
the opposite direction from IBM and Apple in terms of displayable colors?
Did they remove HAM without telling anyone? To the best of my knowledge,
the 3000 can still display 4096 colors right out of the box.
Now the Bridgeboard is a whole different ballgame. It is an independent
option that has little to do with using a 2000 or 3000 as it's host. In
any event, VGA is hardware as well as software, so I rather doubt it would
be cost effective for CBM to produce a VGA capable bridgeboard for the
Amiga at this time. (At least that would be the case for this customer. As
long as the Amiga has PC slots equal to or in excess of the number of Amiga
slots on a PC, I'd be happy with it.)
I can't really comment on the special new modes. If I had to guess, I
would imagine they were done that way as a trade-off between having the
higher resolution available or having more color in an environment with a
cost effective amount of RAM. I would also imagine that some enterprising
third party developers will investigate the marketability of an add-on to
increase the colors available in those modes once the 3000/2.0 chipset
comes into general availability. (It may well be that the cost of such an
add-on vs. the probable market would cause the idea to be dropped though.)
Well, the Amiga can already display more colours than a Mac or MsDos
machine. When they get a HAM-alike mode, we can talk about number of
colours again. CBM is not moving in the opposite direction, but are, for
now, staying with the same number of colours _in the box_.
See my response to #101004. I know the operating system was designed to
use more than 4-5 bit planes. I had hoped that they would expand that area
first.
Sorry we couldn't be at Worl Of Amiga, but we were at a much bigger show
(The Dayton HamVENTION) showing our new 262,144 color adaptor for all
Amigas. If you can make the Chicago AmiExpo, we'll be there (even tho the
DevCon overlaps with it).
Compatability: It uses your current monitor, the Blitter and the CPU can
get at the memory, you can open windows, use gadgets and so on under the
current OS so that developers can write applications for it using most of
the current ROM toolset. Installation is trivial (plugs in line with your
monitor, no opening the case) and it will work with _any_ Amiga. Our
multi-color solution is extremely fast, works perfectly with existing IFF
viewers, amd is inexpensive ($300.00 or thereabouts). Hope that encourages
you somewhat.
Ben, I've been hearing alot about your HAM-E board, and it sounds great. I
have a question though. Are there any problems with animation? I had heard
that while the board is active, the Amiga is busy displaying a 640x
whatever 4 bit-plane display, and this chews up a lot of cycles (especially
with overscan). Can you comment on this? I'm sure the excellent quality of
the images would more than compensate for any speed loss, but I was just
wondering if a fast Amiga (2500 or up) would be required for smooth
animation.
Good questions. 4 bitplanes in hires it is indeed, and if you need to
rewrite the entire screen, it can take longer than you would want to even
blitting in the bitplanes. Most animation does NOT have changes in every
region of the screen, however, so you can have quite a nice looking display
with some minimal care in selecting what updates and changes and so on. I
would _always_ suggest the blitter as the data mover, and in that case the
speed of the CPU has little (if anything) to do with the animation speed.
When doing single frame stuff the question doesn't arise, of course.
Steven, various Commodorians have hinted at the fact that there are things
in the works. Unless you become a certified developer, just like me you
won't know till its out.