IndivisionECS will have dual video output!

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Next step, the rest of the chipset

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/me waiting for a 16-bit Paula

2 Paula's piggybacked = 8 channels!!!

8 channels isn't really that useful, since the Amiga only has two physical outputs, 2 16bit channels would have been much more useful.

But since Paula never received an upgrade no software was ever written to take advantage of better audio, so any upgrade to Paula would be a waste of time.

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Oh, I dunno. I quite like the idea of a replacement that is register compatible with Paula but extends it with a few extra features. It would be cool if the incoming sample data was internally upsampled to 16/24-bits 44/48kHz, with optional interpolation per channel. In addition you could have a pan register for each channel. Digital output would be very nice too.

Even if all you had to start with was a global "mixer" tool that could bang these new registers directly to globally set the interpolation/panning of each channel it would be better than nothing.

yeah it's a nice idea, and the old longing for such a thing is strong... But honestly, a cheap Audio DSP chip off the shelf would be soooooooooo much better it is scary!

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Hello Jens,

By looking at the picture with the 3 screens, I can see that the dual screen trick is done this way :
The Amiga (I mean Agnus...) is set up to display a 640x512 interlaced screen but the workbench thinks it is a 1280x256 screen.
One FF shows the even frames, the other one shows the odd frames. Screen update is done at 25Hz in the FF's SDRAM and 75Hz on the screens.
Very smart trick indeed.
To get higher resolutions, you will have to lower the update rate. It reminds me the high resolution screen from commodore that was combining 4 screens and had an update rate of 15 Hz.

Back to the indivision, a good use of it would be to get HW acceleration for MAME.
If it is possible to reconfigure the FPGA on the fly without flashing the board, that might be possible (I do not want to reflash the board each time I play a different game).

Regards,

Frederic

I don't think so... it looks like the Amiga thinks it displays a 640*512 (or 640*256 it doesn't matter) with 4 bitplanes, i.e. 16 colours... but the first two bitplanes display on one monitor and the other two display on the other monitor... giving two 8 colour screens... it is a bit like the old DualPlayfield effect that I used to love using to get faster blitting back in the day... but with each playfield on a different monitor. One of the few advantages of using blitplane graphics over chunky ones...

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You sure that isn't a pair of 4-colour screens?  

Yeah... Note to self: don't post before I've had my first coffee of the day :p

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OMG ffs. Its too expensive. booo fooking hoo.
 
Simple Don't buy it. I doubt anyone actually cares that some of you wanted to buy loads of them.
 
I want an Audi R8, but I can't afford £76k  ($150K) , if they sold them for £100 they would sell more. I want one for £100 its not fair booo hoo.

+1

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Interesting idea. I think this could be achieved without any need for additional software support.

You need some simple logic to detect a condition where channels from single side have the same sampling frequency (rate) and volume set to either 64 and 1 or 1 and 64. See here for details: http://aminet.net/package/mus/misc/Pro14bitbet

When the condition is met you can then take the two different 8-bit components and produce a true 16-bit data out of it.

This way it would work with manual tricks such as descibed in the Pro14bitbet and with the 14-bit noteplayers available for various player apps (such as http://aminet.net/package/mus/play/Deli14BitGenie). As a bonus you'd get 16-bit paula AHI for free (paula.audio supports the 14-bit mode).

now this idea rocks!

Hopefully Jens is noting it down for any future work

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You want an Audi R8 ?
 
Lets both chip in and share one

Hmmmm... Ok, but only if it has an iPhone connector :p



@Jens ignore the stultifyingly illinformed armchair experts! While the indivision is not a product that I currently require, I think it is well priced and I look forward to future products based on the CloneA project (yes, I am waiting for the Big One )

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Hmmmm... Ok, but only if it has an iPhone connector :p

Sorry that was a deal breaker for me :lol:

:lol:

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We even have more in the works, but that's nothing I can reveal at this point. It's not yet clear if we can really have these features in the product, but I'll keep you updated here. The hardware is final, and while Oliver keeps developing, I have launched production today: All parts have been confirmed and PCB production has been started. If all goes well, assembly will be done during the last week of this month.

Jens

: good luck Jens, and well done for all your hard work!




p.s. I'm still waiting for the big one

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Mmmm not sure but it would be an interesting contest.

In the red corner we have a 7MHZ 68000 with a chunky 8bit display....and in the blue corner we have a 14MHZ 68020 with a planar 8bit display....ok, FIGHT!

The Graffiti was a device that when I first saw an advert for one in AmigaFormat (12 years ago?), I remember being a bit confused as to how it could work... So I sat down with a pen an paper and try to work through the idea... and once I had figured it out, I realised that it was probably the most brilliant idea ever

As I understand it, the Amiga sets up a 1 bitplane bitmap, and then the graffiti treats every 8 (actually I believe it was less than this) pixels as bits in a single chunky pixel.

If my understanding is correct, then for an 8bit chunky display, the maximum width would be 160 pixels with the graffiti (with either 256 or 512 pixels high). Unless the device can just treat the whole Amiga output as a single bitmap? Then we have 1280*512 bits = 81.9Kb, and if an 8bit 320*256 display is also 81.9kb... that would be a very acceptable lowres 8bit chunky display on an ECS machine!

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@Jens

Somewhat off-topic, have you ever thought of designing an accelerator card? Almost every A1200 accelerator card I've used has had memory access times a lot lower than is the theoretical peak for the CPU on the card. It would be rather nice to have something comparable to the CT60 Then see about an A600 version LOL!

Think about where the IndivisionECS is ultimately going... And other comments by Jens in this very thread... If I'm right about this, you won't need/want an accelerator

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I think I'd prefer something like the Boxer rather than a PCI card with custom chipset on them, if that's what you are getting at

Oh no! nothing like that!!! I was referring to the very early CloneA concept, I've never been  fan of the chipset on a PCI card... since I prefer to do as much in software a possible.