#Monitor upgrade
5 messages in this thread
Either my 9-year-old 1080 monitor or my 5-year-old CIA chips are getting a
bit flaky. When the problem (streaking, colors fading, twitching) gets
less intermittent, I will hook up to my TV tuner and find out for sure
whether it is the monitor or not.
If it is the monitor, I'm thinking of perhaps adding a display board and
using a fancier one. I have a fair amount of info on the subject in old
magazines, but does anyone have any warnings or good advice to share?
Bart Mathias
Bart,
What Amiga model/configuration do you have? What are your primary uses for the
Amiga? Games? DTP? etc.
Cheers, Marty
ProActive Images Inc.
"WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT ALL DAY LONG" – RW EMERSON
Marty,
I have a bad habit of forgetting to mention my model/configuration. I've
got an A2000 with accelerator (…30/33) and 3M RAM. (Plus a no-longer-
compatible 2M board, drat!)
Most of my computer time is spent online, then word-processing, various
kinds of data collection and sorting, teaching-material preparation, etc.
I recently bought a hand-scanner, and also have one of the leading paint
programs, so I do a little bit of graphics.
When I can put large enough blocks of time together, I can get very
involved with assembler programming. And often when I should shut down
and do something else I'll play a few rounds of Baffle, a word game that
came with Amiga+ magazine. Much more rarely I may fire up Amoeba or
Montana (solitaire), but I'm not much into games.
Is this a clue as to what to do about my monitor? Thanks for asking.
Bart
Bart,
As with most technology, your choice of monitor replacement will depend to a
great extent by how much $ you are willing to part with <g>
Some things you may want to consider:
If you are not interested in getting a monitor with a screen size larger than
14" there are three multisync models that are compatible with all of the
display screens that your 2000 is capable of generating. AmigaWorld did a nice
job of reviewing them (NOV/94). Each of these monitors can sync to the NTSC
standard, hence no flicker-fixer required. On the other hand if you want to
take advantage of some of the nicer SVGA monitors including the 17" and up
models, things get a bit more complicated. You can keep the display abilities
of your A2000 and pick up a flicker-fixer. This would allow you to use VGA and
SVGA monitors. If you want to upgrade the graphics display options on your
A2000 then you will have to invest in a graphics board of some sort (ie Retina,
Picasso, Spectrum etc). Unfortunately, there is no graphics board available
that provides FULL AGA emulation. Some boards like the Retina offer AGA
emulation for most non-game programs. You mentioned that games are not a
priority for you, so this might be the way to go. The Retina offers SVGA
output. Hopes this helps.
Cheers, Marty
ProActive Images Inc.
"WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT ALL DAY LONG" – RW EMERSON
Marty,
I find your reply very helpful. I had recently reviewed the AW Nov 94
article, but I had the feeling that I had read of other options somewhere
or other, and you have provided me with hints that I can understand and
work from.
I'm still not sure my current problem lies in the monitor. I'm starting
to worry that it could turn out to be a more serious problem, and I may
even go back to considering how I would use my Amiga if I went blind.
(There's a <g> in there somewhere, but I'm half serious. How hard would
it be to write an audio editor for assembler programming? Etc.)
Bart