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Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Application questions and support => Topic started by: sjprohaska on September 28, 2009, 04:01:49 AM
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Is it possible to make Workbench 3.1 on an A1200 look as good as 3.1 on Amiga Forever 2009?
Thanks
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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?
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What is a "bgcpc"? Do you mean PC? The only other graphics card in my A1200 is an Indivision scan doubler.
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Hi,
That's the problem. AGA does not have enough colors to do what yo want. Time for a graphics card.
Chris
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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.
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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.
(http://home.iprimus.com.au/novacoder/composite.jpg)
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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
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Thanks.
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Keep in mind that it will use a lot of Chipram (which is used for Video ram too)...
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Or you could go with 16 colours and save chip RAM. 16 colour WB 3.1 can also be made to look good.
(http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/2187/1_4210.png)
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Or you could go with 16 colours to save chip RAM. 16 colour WB 3.1 can be made to look good too.
(http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/2187/1_Picot.png)
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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!
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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.
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@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.
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@mr_a500
Yes, that is an impressive use of a 16 color display!
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Is it possible to make Workbench 3.1 on an A1200 look as good as 3.1 on Amiga Forever 2009?
Thanks
Yes. But not if you don't have a hard drive.
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nice workbench. here is an old one of mine using 640x512 in 16 cols (used magictv or something to reduce interlace flicker).
(http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/wb.png)
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Here's a screenshot of my 16 colour Workbench. I've got an IndivisionAGA, so I'm running in flicker-free 1024x768. I'm demonstrating SabreMSN in this shot.
(http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/2061/1_SabreOS3Screenshot.png)
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Aaah good old mr floyd and steinberg! ;-)
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Hi,
Not bad, they're a bit spotty at those low res's but I bet they chew up fast & chip mem like crazy.
Chris
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Thanks to all for your info and advice. Before I try any of this I know I will have to pick up that ADF transfer kit so I can download some of the stuff you mention and put it on my amiga. I'm also going to look into picking up and accelerator.
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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!
I'm putting that DCTV icon up on eBay. You can bid on it. No reserve! Better hurry. ;)
OK, I'll attach it here. Just rename DCTV.zip to DCTV.info. I hope you appreciate it. You don't know how much I could have gotten on eBay. :D
Speaking of HD failures, I just had another one die. This one was my backup to the other one that died - so I lost some recent stuff. Modern 2.5" drives are absolute crap! I'll never buy another one. From now on, it's flash all the way.
Edit: Oh crap - I just realized my DCTV icon will probably be useless to you. It's not in Newicons format because Newicons has a 93x93 limit. It's standard format, mapped to my palette. Oh well. (...that also means whoever bought it on eBay would have given me a "Not as described" feedback ;))
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That is a very impressive workbench!
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@Mr_A500: any chance to put the Sys: partition in a zipped file (no need for the WHDload.key or ROM kickstart images, of course!) for lazy people like me to download it? :D
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@Mr_A500: any chance to put the Sys: partition in a zipped file (no need for the WHDload.key or ROM kickstart images, of course!) for lazy people like me to download it? :D
I can understand that. I'm very lazy myself. Unfortunately, I'm far too lazy to make a proper archive. ;)
Seriously, if it was legal to upload an image of my entire hard drive, I would. (...and I mean software image, not a photo of my hard drive...which is legal)
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If you can provide an image of your HDD, I'ld be interested to make a Mr_a500 workbench kit from it.
What happens is, I'll strip your workbench of copyrighted files and write a script which will put them back. Just like the classic workbench setup.
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I'm putting that DCTV icon up on eBay. You can bid on it. No reserve! Better hurry. ;)
OK, I'll attach it here. Just rename DCTV.zip to DCTV.info. I hope you appreciate it. You don't know how much I could have gotten on eBay. :D
Speaking of HD failures, I just had another one die. This one was my backup to the other one that died - so I lost some recent stuff. Modern 2.5" drives are absolute crap! I'll never buy another one. From now on, it's flash all the way.
Edit: Oh crap - I just realized my DCTV icon will probably be useless to you. It's not in Newicons format because Newicons has a 93x93 limit. It's standard format, mapped to my palette. Oh well. (...that also means whoever bought it on eBay would have given me a "Not as described" feedback ;))
Hey mr_A500: Actually the icon shows up fine on my 1200T, I may need to remap the background color of the icon, but basically it still looks pretty nice. Thanks!
'Vintage Amiga icon, sold AS-IS, as I no longer have a computer/electricity/brain, I am unable to test. Bid accordingly.'
Man, seeing some of these screenshots makes me think I have to improve my WB's look for like, the 37th time ;)
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This is my 64colors Wb on A1200/040/AGA/64Mb + C1942 monitor
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/9430/wb2kn.jpg
Software:
FastBlit
FullPalette
MagicCooper
ToolsDeamon
StartMenu
PS:
MagicCooper effect is added in paint program on this grab. (screen grabbing program dosen't copy MCooper gradient).
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Not very exciting
[youtube]yK34-obrWuE[/youtube]
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Rebel,
What did you use to create a windows taskbar? I like that a lot.
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Here's a screenshot of my 16 colour Workbench. I've got an IndivisionAGA, so I'm running in flicker-free 1024x768. I'm demonstrating SabreMSN in this shot.
Hm, is that AfA that draws window decos, or something else? I think last time I tried, AfA skins on 8bit or lower didnt work. It would be very nice if it did though, then one cold create window decos especially for low depths.
Btw, I cant help liking MagicWB on lowres, for example on my minimig:
(http://kolla.no/minimig/minimig-OS39-10.jpg)
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Rebel,
What did you use to create a windows taskbar? I like that a lot.
I use the a great little program called Workbench2000 for the task bar. It has all the same features as the Windows one has, with quick-launch icons, a start menu that can launch apps as well as browse your drives, task buttons for all windows and screens (which can be configured or blocked according to the user), it shows appicons in the tray along with a couple of selectable system monitors (I just use the clock), and it can minimise ANY window by clicking on its task button while its already active, which I think it does by sending it behind the Workbench backdrop window, then bringing it back to front when you click on it again (or Alt+Tab).
Here's a little demonstration of it with several windows and task buttons open at once:
(http://home.exetel.com.au/amiga/WorkbenchGames.png)
I'm still running good old Workbench 3.1, so I've had to take the slightly more traditional route to theming my Workbench than AFAOS's Skin system, by using a combination of VisualPrefs, Birdie, FullPalette, MUI 3.8, TitleShadow, and Directory Opus Magellan. I'd love it if AFAOS gets AGA support, being able to change everything including button borders and scrollbars really appeals to me.
Everything (except DOpus Magellan) can be found on Aminet.
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@Rebel-CD32
What Amiga is that? I'd love to be able to use a screenmode that huge - with all that extra space - but I'm too attached to my 1080. It has a nice glow you don't get on VGA. Besides, that must take a hell of a lot of chip RAM.
I'd describe your theme as "Ubista" - Ubuntu and Vista (too bad I hate both... nice work on the remapping though). My theme is sort of "AOSX". So between us, we've got all the major OSes covered. ;)
Hm, is that AfA that draws window decos, or something else? I think last time I tried, AfA skins on 8bit or lower didnt work. It would be very nice if it did though, then one cold create window decos especially for low depths.
Here's a window decoration for low depth... also low depth decoration in the window. :D
(...oh good - another chance to show my bikini screenshot...)
(http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=22102&d=1247669879)
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If you can provide an image of your HDD, I'ld be interested to make a Mr_a500 workbench kit from it.
What happens is, I'll strip your workbench of copyrighted files and write a script which will put them back. Just like the classic workbench setup.
I like that idea because it allows me to continue to be very lazy.
I could zip and send you my Workbench partition, but it'll be around 75Mb. There is one reference to my Work partition that I can't find. Also, as I said, my main hard drive died and this is an older backup which isn't quite up to date - so some icons are crap and I'm too lazy to fix them again. Anybody seeing them would say, "Wait a minute... these icons are crap! What the hell? Mr_a500 sucks!" (...and that sort of thing would haunt me for the rest of my days...)
If you still want it, let me know. :D
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@Rebel-CD32
What Amiga is that? I'd love to be able to use a screenmode that huge - with all that extra space - but I'm too attached to my 1080. It has a nice glow you don't get on VGA. Besides, that must take a hell of a lot of chip RAM.
I'd describe your theme as "Ubista" - Ubuntu and Vista (too bad I hate both... nice work on the remapping though). My theme is sort of "AOSX". So between us, we've got all the major OSes covered. ;)
The screenshot is from my A1200 030/50 with 32MB Fast RAM, IDE-CF, Subway USB, with an Indivision AGA which lets me run HighGFX screenmodes (up to 1024x768) flicker-free on any VGA monitor. The upcoming InvidisionECS supports the same screenmodes but you'd be confined to 4 colours like other Super-High-Res modes. Thanks to FBlit, I never run into any ChipRAM problems unless I open too many high resolution screens. With Workbench open and the full-screen wallpaper I have a little over 1.5MB Chip free, and it barely declines at all when I start opening applications.
You're not alone in your hatred for Vista and Ubuntu, I cant stand them either, but as a bit of an experiment really I started buggering around to see if I could replicate the GUI themes from other OSs. I made a Windows XP one as well, and I'm going to make a RiscOS one next. I like your AOSX theme, too :)
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The screenshot is from my A1200 030/50 with 32MB Fast RAM, IDE-CF, Subway USB, with an Indivision AGA which lets me run HighGFX screenmodes (up to 1024x768) flicker-free on any VGA monitor. The upcoming InvidisionECS supports the same screenmodes but you'd be confined to 4 colours like other Super-High-Res modes. Thanks to FBlit, I never run into any ChipRAM problems unless I open too many high resolution screens. With Workbench open and the full-screen wallpaper I have a little over 1.5MB Chip free, and it barely declines at all when I start opening applications.
I've tried FBlit many times, but it always slowed down my A500 to half speed. It must have something to do with the colour-depth/bandwidth problem because in 4 colour mode, it works fine and is very fast. In 16 colour mode, it is super-slow. I can't use it.
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@Mr_A500: if Coze don't want the archive, I can do it myself! :D