OS 3.1 graphics

[sjprohaska]

Is it possible to make Workbench 3.1 on an A1200 look as good as 3.1 on Amiga Forever 2009?


Thanks

[ChaosLord]

I assume you are the kind of person who bought a 16 million color graphics card for your bgcpc but did not buy one for your Amiga?

[sjprohaska]

What is a "bgcpc"?  Do you mean PC?  The only other graphics card in my A1200 is an Indivision scan doubler.

[QuikSanz]

Hi,

That's the problem. AGA does not have enough colors to do what yo want. Time for a graphics card.

Chris

[sjprohaska]

Thanks to all.  A simple "no" to my first question would have been ok.  I'm not really ok with the "I assume you're the kind of person....." that I got from the first responder.  I should have mentioned it is a desktop A1200 and not a tower, but I guess that makes me guilty of "assuming" as well.

Thanks.

[NovaCoder]

Hiya,

Don't worry about them, maybe it's the wrong time of the month or something.

Anyway to answer your question, this screen-grab show's (about) the best you can do with an AGA only machine.

[Thomas]

Is it possible to make Workbench 3.1 on an A1200 look as good as 3.1 on Amiga Forever 2009?
Thanks

Yes, certainly it is. Amiga Forever up to version 6 is based on Workbench 3.1 and looks just the same as current versions.

You need:

- set screenmode to 256 colors and preferably a mode with 1:1 aspect (e.g. Multiscan, DblPAL or the like).
- install GIF, PNG and JPEG datatypes
- get your favourite wallpaper and set it in wbpattern prefs
- install newicons (the program, not the icons)
- download your favourite icon set from Aminet and replace the standard icons by the downloaded ones. This is a lot of manual work.
- install Toolmanager and cusomize it.

That's what AF contains. In addition you might want to install VisualPrefs and some other patches which allow to change the appearance.

Bye,
Thomas

[sjprohaska]

Thanks.

[CLS2086]

Keep in mind that it will use a lot of Chipram (which is used for Video ram too)...

[mr_a500]

Or you could go with 16 colours and save chip RAM. 16 colour WB 3.1 can also be made to look good.

[mr_a500]

Or you could go with 16 colours to save chip RAM. 16 colour WB 3.1 can be made to look good too.

[marcfrick2112]

mr_a500: rather nice screenshot there! Any chance you could share that DCTV icon?

@sjprohaska:  As mentioned, without a graphics card, you will run out of colours/ Chip RAM, sooner or later. For my backdrops, I use ImageF/X to reduce the colours of the background pic.. can help with appearance, and to conserve chip ram... (a bit)  It can be tricky, but OS 3.1 can be made to look pretty. You may have to experiment....   The sad thing is, my old A500 WB looked prettier than my current A1200 WB.... but a lot has to do with laziness, and losing a great deal after a HD failure.... :madashell:

Best of Luck!

[kvasir]

You might want to take a look @ AmigaSYS. (http://amigasys.extra.hu/amiga.html , link button doesn't seem to work in IB) Not used it myself, as I'm too picky at customizing my machine, but the screengrabs look nice. Though it seems a bit more of a custom software install, too. (If you're starting from a plain vanilla install it might be helpful, though)

EDIT: Browsing through the screenshots, I remembered I did install Amigasys on a bootable zip drive. Worked pretty well, used some of the proggies and graphics on my Sony Clié UAE installation.

[wawrzon]

@mr_a500: looking at that i almost regret having a gfx card and a 1680x1050 lcd. my workbench looks like a pile of trash compared to that.

[kvasir]

@mr_a500

Yes, that is an impressive use of a 16 color display!