Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: steve30 on January 25, 2006, 01:10:30 AM
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I'm now getting a bit fed up of PCs and would like to switch to amiga. Not a complete switch, obviously, as there will still be quite a bit of stuff that I have to do on the PC.
To start with, I got a 1438 monitor, and bought an A1200 + Blizzard 1230 50Mhz from Effy. (should arrive in the next couple of days).
Over at classicamiga everyone told me that this card gives a great speed increase over the standard 68020 processor.
I now have a few questions:
How well does AmigaOS3.9 run on this card?
Would internet access be fast and usable via 2mbps broadband?
How would it compare to using a 500MHz PentiumIII with Windoze?
Also, if there's any other comments you have about how nicely this machine might run, please tell me.
Thanks
Steve
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It's going to be slower than the Pentium for a number of reasons but all in all it should be quite useable. You should get a 3Com or even wireless pcmcia nic card and off you go. The graphics are going to be limited to 8-bit AGA and tcp/ip stacks and browsers are not the fastest on earth nor do the browsers have all the modern features like javascript and CSS, etc.
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I know the browsers arn't very good. I've used them in WinUAE.
What would it be like running OS3.5? Might this be faster than OS3.9? Or would OS3.9 be better than 3.5?
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If you want speed and features on the internet, the PC will be better. Putting the Amiga online is handy for doing Amiga related stuff, but your PC will be better featured/supported for internet usage. If you're trying to avoid Windows issues, you may also consider an alternative operating system for your x86 box. The 1200 should still be good to use for a number of things, but it's not really the best system for all purposes.
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The most important part for os3.9 is the amount of ram. If you want to actually surf the internet using a web browser, then you might also want to invest in a graphic card, as the main thing that slows down the browser is the slow aga chipset. If you just want to irc, mail or similar then aga should work just fine even though things look ugly due to lack of colours and small res.
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I think I will eventually get a graphics card.
Would I need a tower conversion for things like graphics cards? I don't currently plan on doing that as I would like to keep it all in the desktop case.
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The only GFX card for the desktop A1200 is the BlizzardVision which only works with a PowerPC accelerator card and is very expensive as such.
There is another accelerator with a graphics cardslot and sound chip being designed right now called the PowerVixxen from ACK Software Controls which is what I'm going to upgrade my A1200 to when and if it comes out.
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It isn't recommended to run a BlizzardPPC and Blizzardvision graphics card in the standard desktop case. These babies take a lot of juice and run *hot*
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
There is another accelerator with a graphics cardslot and sound chip being designed right now called the PowerVixxen from ACK Software Controls which is what I'm going to upgrade my A1200 to when and if it comes out.
Is this ACK Software Controls accelerator a really real thing ?
I've been out the loop for a while and I don't know if it's just wishful thinking or if there is concrete evidence that it exists.
Regards
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My A500 is running with a GVP A530T (68030) @40MHz, which is slower than your system. For Internet surfing I found the that the pages loaded significantly faster by limiting the Workbench colors to 8. When using 16 color, loading is pretty slow.
This results in an uglier picture, but you can look at the screen grab of Amiga.org I submitted here: A500 surfing the net (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1192).
The fact that you have AGA should give you better performance.
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I have a pretty souped up A1200 (68060@50, 128 MB ram) with OS3.9. Very nice machine, works like a charm. Browsing the web is almost unbearable, though. FTP, mail, IRC and stuff works great.
A completely maxed out A1200 is blown to pieces, speedwise, compared to the PIII/500 you mentioned. As you already know, Amigabrowsers are hardly comparable to their Windows & Linuxcounterparts. If you've never used a classic Amiga for surfing the web, you're in for a special treat...
I use my Amiga's (1200 & 3000) for the things they can handle easily. Browsing the web isn't one of them.
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@sparky
If you look closely at my post I said "when and if" it comes out. ;-)
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Thanks for all the information.
As I said I've used the amiga browsers in WinUAE so I know how crap they are. Perhaps if I just VNCd my PC to use Mozilla.
I've heard that the Amiga's email and IRC clients are great. I've used AmIRC. Are there any better ones? Wheat are the best email programmes?
thanks :-)
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Wheat are the best email programmes?
for e-mail search simple mail or/and yam on aminet
http://aminet.net/tree.php?path=comm
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and ftp clients are cool too. amftp amiftp
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
@sparky
If you look closely at my post I said "when and if" it comes out. ;-)
hehehe .. good choice of words, but I missed them in the first pass at reading :-D
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with a bit of care you should be able to surf on that: choose your screen mode carefully (I suggest Super72 if you can bear it, or productivity), better to use 64 colours, and have lots of RAM !
I used to surf with a similar setup on dialup until I got my A1XE - its still dialup, but much more fun !
my old setup:
A1200 with Apollo 1230 lite (25 MHz 030 + FPU) and 8MB of Fast RAM, and a 2.5" HDD. you might be better advised getting a SCSI board for the Blizzard, that should speed things up.
OS3.9 was intended to run on an 020 with 6MB RAM minimum, but was good on my machine - should be good on yours too !
If you want GFX, you can get a PCI busboard* that goes between your blizzard and the Amiga - but you will need a tower to put it in !
go for it, and let us know how you get on !!
(* not sure if these are still made, but Elbox is a good bet)
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Yes the Mediator PCI busboards for the A1200 are still made:
MEDIATOR 1200LT4 PCI BUSBOARD & MMCD (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=330) (4x slot version)
MEDIATOR 1200SX PCI BUSBOARD & MMCD (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=329) (6x PCI slot version)
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I got my A1200 today!
Unfortunately it has a German keyboard, but that is easily replaced.
The Blizard card has 128MB Fast RAM on it! Now thats a lot. I am currently only able to run Workbench 2.04 as I don't have any later versions, but running it without the blizzard card was nice. After putting the blizzard card in, running WB2 was nice.
Now I just need an HD, CD and network card, and of course OS 3.9
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stick to pc.
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Whilst I agree that the web is a difficult area for the Amiga I would say IBrowse2.3 is still fighting fit and very capable for most things.
A GFX card has always been out of the reach of most desktop Amiga owners and I find this a little daft.
I wonder how many people run their PPC + BVision in the desktop case - I for one would like to try that. I don't like the idea of throwing away the custom A1200 'wedge' for an identity-less OEM case with badly colour-coordinated front panels and fluroescent, glow in the dark fan lights.
:-)
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Hmm, you got a 1200 with OS 2.04? That's a bit odd, as it shipped with 3.0. Were you sold 2.04 with the system? Have you got 3.1 ROMs?
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I still use the Amiga as my first computer,everyday it´s online,always downloading and uploading stuff!
It is still a very good computer!
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No, The A1200 has 3.0 roms.
It didn't come with Workbench. I already had 2.04 from my A500+. I had no choice but to use this as I don't have any other versions.
I'm bidding on some 3.1 roms on ebay.
What resolutions can I get out of the RGB port? I think PAL might be abit too low for web browsing.
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For some strange reason my A1200 could display Super Hi-Res Laced (1280x512) on my SCART TV.
Yes, it was interlaced and flickery but all the pixels were displayed. I can't get this to run on my Scandoubler/FF on a SVGA monitor!
For normal use though I would reccomend NTSC if your TV can take 60Hz vertical refresh. PAL, particularly with games is 17.5% slower and this may be noticed on the web too.
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CHR_ZD wrote:
stick to pc.
I think someone might be trolling :evil:
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Browsing the Net with the Amiga is indeed bad these days, for everything else (ftp/irc/mail etc)it works fine.
The solution i use for it is to make a remote desktop connection to my PC put it in window mode (640*480*16 so it fits nicely on my 1152*900*16 wb screen) set browser (firefox) to max screen size and there you go firefox on your miggy, well not really :-D ,
this works fine on a blizzard ppc with 68040/25Mhz+603e 204Mhz ppc and 128MB ram.
The speed is good even on full screen, you will need a gfx card though (i have a Bvision ppc gfx card)
For file transfer between PC<=>Amiga i use ftp mount wich let you use every ftp server as a drive mapping and you can stream mpeg/mp3 etc file's on your Amiga trough ftp
I also ran my heavy os3.9 config on a csppc with 060/60Mhz+233 604e ppc+cvision ppc+scsi (and i used every hack&patch known and all together and working suprisingly)
and worked superb fast!
And i never had the intention to sit behind my PC directly since that time :-D
But to get the most out of your Amiga experience these days
something faster then a 030 (040/40 or 060/50 are way faster) or a ppc card+gfx card would most certeinly give you much,much more speed and everyday use for your miggy.
also so scsi will do a LOT together with a file system like SFS or PFS (young 40 GB scsi 3 uw 10k rpm drives are cheap 2nd hand these days, bought mine for 50 euro's 1 year old)
The disadvantage is that you have to tower your miggy....
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steve30 wrote:
would like to keep it all in the desktop case.
RU sure? This is very restricting. Revanche make some lovely Amiga cases. :-D
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PPC wrote:
The solution i use for it is to make a remote desktop connection to my PC put it in window mode (640*480*16 so it fits nicely on my 1152*900*16 wb screen) set browser (firefox) to max screen size and there you go firefox on your miggy, well not really :-D ,
He he, I like it. :-D If only the Siamese system had continued development. :-(
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The wedge case is sacred!
A PC style case is not elegant or space efficient, it's just full of fresh air!
Damn have I seen some ugly Amiga 1200s in PC cases, even ones designed specifically for the Amiga.
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A towered Amiga can look very nice, as I posted earlier check out Revanche (http://revanchellc.com/cgi-bin/mivavm?Merchant2/merchant.mvc+Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=REV&Category_Code=CLASC).
I like the idea of a tower machine for expansion and a wedge for potability, if you don't mind being a bit brave you can get a lot of stuff in a wedgey, including a PSU, look at a few PC modding sites for diddy little ones and with a bit of hacking it'll fit. Add a wireless PCMCIA card for Ami joy...
..but a tower still gives you more expansion however much you squeeze into a wedge.
Hyperspeed wrote:
Damn have I seen some ugly Amiga 1200s in PC cases, even ones designed specifically for the Amiga.
So true...but I've seen even more ugly PCs. :-)
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Considering that I have more or less no more money to spend on this machine, upgrading from 030 to 060 or ppc isn't an option, and neither is towering it. I also like the deskptop miggy because it takes up much less space and is much more portable.
I will tower it one day though.
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If 640x512 isn't high enough resolution isn't high enough for you you can boost the resolution horizontally to 1280x512 interlaced but it will be slow in super-highres mode.
Vertically will be the big challange. You can use overscan to get a few more pixels vertically but I doubt a PAL display will go over 560 and still be completely visible.
If you have a "silver-box" adapter for the AGA chipset then you'll be able to connect to a VGA monitor and, depending on the monitor you choose, be able to get 800x600 super-high resolution.
The moments that a "silver-box" adapter will come in handy will be rare if you play a lot of games so a scan-doubler would be your next option and there are only a few available.
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What is a silver box adaptor?
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@steve30
What is a silver box adaptor?
Sync Dongle - VGA Adaptor (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=733) [Big Book of Amiga Hardware (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/)]
NOTE: It's not a scandoubler. You will not be able to use regular VGA monitor for games and demos. To be able to see the games/demos the monitor must be able to sync down to 15kHz and 50/60 Hz.
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An old Commodore adaptor for Amiga 23-pin RGB video port -> PC 9pin VGA
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I won't need that then as I have a 1438 monitor with a 23pin RGB plug.
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Hopefully I'll be getting my roms and os soon.
I think I might do that mode where you put a slimline cd drive in the back of the A1200. That would be much better than having an external one.
What would the 68030 be like at burning CDs? I expect it might be able to at a slow speed. Also what would it be like at playing DVDs and other videos? Someone told me that video is really slow on the 030.
I thought I better ask as I don't want to get a CD-RW drive if it isn't fast enough.
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I've seen a mod where someone's put a slimline CD drive in the A1200 desktop and sprayed the case metallic red. I can't remember if they had transplanted the motherboard into an A500 case though...
As for burning CDs on '030 - you'll need a Blizzard 1230-IV I'd say. SCSI is a lifesaver on '030 since it uses less than 5% of your CPU time due to DMA. MakeCD has an option to burn CD tracks to disc simply by giving it an MP3 file but that will be too slow 'on-the-fly' with an '030.
However, burning CDs needn't be real-time as you can first make an image file then later burn this to CD at full speed (since your hard disk will send it straight without the CPU having to work out things). I've heard of problems with PowerFlyer but with SCSI it's hassle free.
Playing DVDs is out of the picture, as is movies on '030. Your only hope of real time video is Commodore's own format CDXL(?) and earlier AVI/Quicktime files. MPEG, due to it's compression, is only really possible full-screen on '060+GFX card.
The Amiga CD32 could play full motion video on '020/14 with an optional FMV Video-CD cartridge and you can burn Video-CD with MakeCD+VCDGear, but you'll only be able to play these discs back very jerkily with a registered copy of Frogger. Best bet is to get a 30 GBP DVD player for playback if you don't want to buy a big box Amiga.
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Thanks.
I do have the Blizzard 1230-IV, but it's SCSI-less. I was going to get a buffered IDE interface and connect an HD (or possibly a compact flash card) and have the CD mounted in the back of the computer. I forgot the link to the page about this.
The SCSI options seems too expensive for me. The SCSI adaptors are expensive and so are the drives, so IDE is the best option.
I assume MP3 and CD playback would be good?
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I think CD playback would be fine with a sound card, otherwise, don't know how it would go. MP3 playback is possible with an 030, but may make the machine sluggish, specially for high bit rates.
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I've almost purchased a copy of OS3.9, some 3.1 roms, and a buffered IDE interface.
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MP3 playback isn't up to scratch even on the 50Mhz Blizzard 1230-IV. For some reason the FPU version of the mpega.library slows things down considerably with no audible benefit to sound quality.
You'll be using 80-100% CPU, maximum of 22KHz, 200kbit, and possibly stereo will be out of the picture too. It's only when you get to '040 40Mhz does MP3 become realistic. However, if you can live with 22Khz that's still radio quality, if not 44KHz CD quality.
Probably best to have the MP3 loaded into RAM: first or streamed off SCSI.
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What if the MP3 was being played via a network e.g. the MP£ is stored on another computer but played on the amiga?
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Somehow you give me the impression of jumping to amiga thinking it will do everything your PC used to do for you.
Allthough you didn't like your PC it was able to do those things you want.
Ok too save you some time searching through the forums here's some summary.
You have an 030 A1200 with no GFX card.
This does NOT do the following in a way even slightly comparable to a moderatly modern PC (or an old one (<1997) for that matter):
-AUDIO (MP3,VQF and alike)
-VIDEO (AVI, DIVX, DVD and alike)
-Web browsing (no flash no java and so on)
-.....why should I go on?
The comment made earlier that was being thought of as trolling was a very good one; stick to PC.
Anyway as it is too late to save you some bread we might as well go on with it. But for your own happyness; see this as a nice hobby with a classic computer. Or else you are heading on collision course with MAYOR DISSAPPOINTMENT.
Make your hobby fun; rob a bank and get the following:
- Hot accelerator (the hotter the better; MELT THAT PLASTIC CASE -> 68060 minimum but go for PPC(+BVISION))
- Über expensive expansion stuff (PCI nothing less)
- Cards that actually belong in a PC (so you'll get closer to your goal; a PC) think Voodoo, soundblasters and stuff
- Harddisk that make an amiga overflow (Anything above 4G will do that ;-) the more the better)
- Scandoubler/FF (SELL A KIDNEY IF YOU MUST. you do want to play SWOS on your VGA don't ya?)
- Hook up some cool scsi stuff (CDRW ....no that is old DVDRW at least (what was I thinking))
- Watercooling.....mmm no I'm going too far now.
You get the idea...max it out. That is what you want. you know you get the ultimate amiga award; no need to buy a virus scanner :)
Take care!
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When I said switching to amiga, I didn't really mean making a complete switch. I just wanted a nice machine that can do stuff like play MP3s, browse internet, etc.
I'm not actually going to be using it as a PC replacement. There's no way I can afford stuff like PPCs, 060s, GFX cards etc. I'm just trying to make the most of the equipment that I can afford.
Basically, I want to use my amiga a LOT more than I do at the moment.
I think the 030 should be fine. But when I win the lottery I will definately be upgrading to 060/PPC.
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I can tell you from personal experience that MP3 playing is possible on a 68030 at 50mhz. You have to reduce the sound quality, the maximum frequency, increase the sound buffer and force the songs to be played at mono, not stereo. My prefered player is SongPlayer.
Web browsing is very limited as you already know, but that applies to all Amigas, advanced or not. On an AGA Amiga browsing at 640x512 with some overscan and 128 colors is reasonable as long as you don't forget to install FBlit and FText or SystemPatch at your startup-sequence. Not in great speed, though.
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I think I'll stick with PC for web browsing.
I really should install linux on my PC.
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hehe, well I was a bit of trying you there.
You are on the right track afterall.
An A1200 with an 030@50 added with 16MB of RAM is a great system for toying around on.
You can use it for MP3 but the quality is really bad.
Also you could use it to retrieve email if you have a nic.
Some attachments might be troublesome as the system cannot handle the size of photo's attached to email nowadays in a sufficient way. JPG's take time to load especially a 5Mpixel one.
You can use it to chat IRC and even MSN through Jabberwocky (no personal experience here).
And I can recommend whdload. Registering is just 20 euro.
All this can be done on a plain 640x256 PAL monitor. Ofcourse a scandouble/FF enlarges your screen realestate but it'll cost you quite some bread.
EDIT: The FF makes 640x512 usefull thus enlarging your realestate.
Take care and have fun!
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i think an A1200 030/50 with say 16 or 32 Meg run on a PAL or NTSC monitor is probably the fastest,most cost effective and most compatible way to use a "classic" amiga. Yeah an 040 or 68060 is faster but cost alot more, and you do get software issues from time to time (especially with games). And then you really need a graphics card to things justice. If you stick to software that was written for the AGA chipset eg Dpaint, Brilliance, Music-X, Bars and Pipes, Scala, Sound studio, ImageFx then you'll be fine. You could output your animations to videotape or digitize it on your pc which can then convert this to an an mpeg file that you could burn to dvd or videocd with your pc, if you wanted to have fun with it. I found the least resource-intensive way to play mp3's was with mpega and a litle script i found on a covercd that opens a lister to choose your mp3 file. Sounds ok but sounds better if you can open a dblPAL scrren if you have a multisync monitor
I have web browsed in pal overscan 64 colors with Ibrowse with dithering on and using FBlit and Ftext which shift graphics to fastmen to give speed up. Yeah u don't get the pretty pics and flash but alot of this is eye candy and you can set up your browser to open a HaM screen if you want to see jpegs. I would install OS3.1, Magic Workbench(in 8 colors) Magic menu, MUI, Tool mananger, with a font like newtopaz (this font helps to fit more text on a Pal screen and looks nice on a pal screen) and this gives you an authentic Amiga look and feel. OS3.5+ uses glowicons which I think really need a a grphx card to look good. The task scheduler Executive also seems to help alot for speed even burning cd's
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I don't remember Bars & Pipes or Music-X being written for AGA. Are you sure about this? I know there are versions to run on non-AGA Amiga's. Do you have AGA versions, and do they look any different from the ECS versions? One thing that always bugged me about those programs is that they're kind of ugly.
stefcep wrote:
I found the least resource-intensive way to play mp3's was with mpega and a litle script i found on a covercd that opens a lister to choose your mp3 file. Sounds ok but sounds better if you can open a dblPAL scrren if you have a multisync monitor
Looks better? :-?
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Well, my A1200 has 128MB Fast rAM, so that's obviously alot. Everyone keeps recomending 16-32MB.
I think I'll just have to get all the accessories and start it up and see what I can do with it. :-)
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Yep that's the best way. You have your self a nice setup with a little to much ram ;) but that doesn't hurt.
Start to tinker and search the forums.
It is all very subjective to what the best install is.
Personaly I like my 3.9 very much. And you have the hardware to run it (Lack of CDROM might pose problems).
Try them all. Experience is what makes the personal opinion.
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I have been offered a buffered IDE interface for £10, so I will be getting an HD and a CD. My 3.1 ROMs and OS 3.9 CD should be arriving in a few days.
Look forward to getting them.
The 1230 +128MB only cost £75, which is cheaper than than the 1230 + 32MB version at AmigaKit, so I'm happy.
I've used OS3.9 in Amithlon and it was very nice.
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steve30 wrote:
What if the MP3 was being played via a network e.g. the MP£ is stored on another computer but played on the amiga?
The problem is the cpu power needed. The amiga ide interface will not limit you there, so it wont matter where the mp3 file is stored.
You can get a hardware based mp3 player called Mas Player that you plug into the parallel port. This little device will actually let you play mp3 files on a standard a500 without an accelrator. http://www.cdtv.org.uk/mas.html (http://www.cdtv.org.uk/mas.html) official site here"german only:\": http://mp3.mas-player.de/ (http://mp3.mas-player.de/)
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I rarly listen to MP3s anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem, but I do listen to them occaisionaly.
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Tomas: I was just going to suggest a MAS player!
:-)
Plugs onto the parallel port and plays MP3 without needing an '060!
I also heard Executive mentioned, this really is good. If you load it up during sluggish moments it will instantly start making things speed up. Disable it for Quake though or it'll throttle it.
128MB may seem overkill on an '030 but it can still offer advantages - you will be able to surf most of the day by caching to Ram Disk: and you'll be able to make massive quality scans.
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I didn't think 128MB will be too much. I couldn't really see much use for it all though.
Although I'd rather pay £75 for a 1230 +128MB than pay £89 for a 1230 +32MB.
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Hi!
The only reason I don't currently use my 1200 as much as I used to is I still have to fix/replace the keyboard.
However, I used to do all the things you've been talking about regularly when I was on res. at Uni. a few years ago on pretty much the same setup (I have the SCSI option on the BlizIV).
MY HINTS
========
CD Burning - set it at 1x speed and walk away. It will build an image and burn it in one process from either SCSI or IDE (only tried a SCSI burner, though) if you set it and walk away for 72 mins (the length of a CD). It may work at faster speeds but I've yet to make a single coaster.
Mp3 - I was playing these last night. Use DeliTracker and the Mp3 player genie. Go direct from drive, do not have a large buffer (1sec or less delay) and set as mono with 22050 frequency. Fiddle with the options a bit and you'll be able to use PPaint for general drawing at the same time with not-too-sluggish effect (for example).
Web - Turn the automatic loading of images OFF. You DON'T NEED THEM. I even turn them off in IE at work half the time, except useless PC browsers don't have a nice 'load all images' button, and make it a pain to right-click-'load image' like iBrowse, AWeb and Voyager! This is a pain for PCs, but use on Amiga makes browsing MUCH more efficient. ONLY VIEW THE IMAGES YOU WANT TO SEE. Uh-hmm, excuse my yelling. ;-)
Screenmodes - Max Overscan may give you a little extra space, but it causes the DMA to slow down noticably. Consider changing the screen size to be larger than the actual display in multiples of 16 (eg, 640x512, try 704x576). Then, put icons and calculators and DeliTracker on one of two edges which generally remain off-screen during use, and size your windows to fir the entire VISIBLE display: instant icon bars! :-D
There are so many other things you can do which make the Amiga a joy to use, even if you do need a crowbar to coerce it in the beginning. Once you figure it out, using a PC is an annoying, misguided process.
Be well!
benJamin
"I use a PC all day at work. Why the hell would I want one in my home?"
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Interesting piece.
I think I will have all images load up, as I like to see images, I do agree though that if you don't want them, then it is handy to have the view all images button. But in this day and age, who has an internet connection so slow that it would take all day to download a few pics, and who uses a computer that is too slow to download all the pics? Well, a few of us have the slow computer, but I bet we all have >50kbps connections. So it is understandable not having the options to disable images, and not being able to load all of them up in one go.
Could someone please expain this 'overscan' thing to me? I've messed around with the overscan prefs and I don't get what it does.
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Also, could someone please tell me how I can get the screenmode 'DblPAL Hires No Flicker'?
Effy told me to try this when he sent me my A1200 but I can't find the mode in the screenmode prefs in WB3.0.
I have a 1438 multiscan monitor. :-?
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I think that's on one of WB3 disks devs/monitors
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I will have to have a look for it.
I have only looked through Workbench3.0 and Extras3.0.
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I was thinking more about this as I was working away from my terminal...
If you go to, say, Amiga.org and hit the 'load all images' button, all the images will load while you read the news headlines. Then, because you have soooo much RAM, all the images are cached and any that have already been downloaded and decoded are put straight into the page, and only 'new' images appear missing (when you browse down to other pages on the same site). This will save your bandwidth and download limit (should you have one) for whatever else it is that people use their service for (I have a huge limit + off-peak on Cable, yet I only average 64-100Mb of downloads per month, so it doesn't bother me :crazy: ),
Overscan - Well, on a TV, say, you can have graphics appear in the border so the display goes 'right to the edge'. I think it had no effect to Workbench (the viewable area is the same as the maximum overscan size) on the VGA monitor I recently installed (there was no room on my desk for a VGA and 1084, so I begrudingly stopped playing 'Settlers' for a while).
The DblPAL and DblNTSC drivers should be in your 'Storage/Monitors' directory on the 'Extras:' disk (IMMSMC).
You can still have larger-than-display screens by setting the size larger than the viewable zone in the ScreenMode prefs, but I don't know if it works with all screen modes...
benJamin
"Looking for a replacement keyboard..."
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(http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jaminjay/Overscan.gif)
Use the overscan prefs to set the position and size of the rectangular areas.
As you can see from the crappy WinPaint picture, the graphics overscan should appear outside the frame of your monitor (this is for games). Workbench uses the text overscan setting to ensure that all text appears inside this frame.
:-D
benJamin
Well, I don't know if Sesame Street will ever be the same again. I can't believe the Cookie Monster would ever claim that "Cookies are a sometimes food". He's a monsters! Monsters do uncooth things, like pretending to eat cookies whilst crushing them and liberally distributing them over the kid(s) standing next to him.
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That makes sense now.
I will *aquire* the storage disk and look for dblpal.
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Found DBLPAL. It's nice.
A little slow in 256 colours, but not much difference between that and my A500+ in 32.
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Yeurgh!
DblPal is going to drain your ChipMem bandwidth like Multiscan productivity, you'll be crawling!
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Seems to run OK in 32 colours. That's both VGA and dblpal hires. But that's only in workbench. Not tried any apps yet.
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Your screen update will be arthritic, no... paraplegic.
Try NTSC in maximum overscan. You'll get a pseudo-widescreen viewable area, low 15KHz bandwidth needs and a smoothe 60Hz vertical refresh.
If you put NTSC into 640x480 you'd get a 4:3 screen ratio (this means pictures of people won't look fat or thin onscreen) and games/demos will swap to PAL 50Hz anyway.
60Hz is what console gamers choose nowadays, it might even be PAL 60Hz if your machine is UK.
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There are ways of making it a little more comfortable {crowbar.get()}:
I use the palette-locking tool recommended by VisualPrefs to lock in the 216 colour 'web palette'. Select the low and high four colours (0-3 and 252-255) from this palette for your eight standard Workbench colours, and colours 16-19 for your mouse. If you use certain images all the time, make sure they only use colours remapped from the 216 and optimise those colours to the lower-half of the palette (so that the higher-plains are zero-filled); this is good for background images that get redrawn frequently. This should leave 40 colours free in the top-half of the palette for programs to get smoother gradients (like the colour wheel object, for example).
This will also improve the overall appearance of web pages as the spread of colours is more even, instead of ending up sepia-like after locking and unlocking various other colours and running out for future images. This is good as most web colours will be picked by the colour allocator as they are close enough, and I find both jpegs and gifs remap quite well (especially if you use PPaint with FS remapping for static images).
I'm sure I could get the palette further optimised if I tried, but as soon as I found it acceptable, I stopped tweaking.
Moving large windows will always be like watching a house being built, but them's the breaks.
benJamin
It must be something in the air at my work, but I keep trying to spell 'palette' p-a-l-l-e-t, which is not what I want.
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Thanks. I will try that.
My OS3.9, 3.1 roms, and ide splitter should be arriving soon.
Hopefully I should be able to use a 5 1/2 inch cd drive and laptop being powered from a pc power supply.
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It all arrived last week! :)
I installed a spare laptop HD in my amiga today and installed WB3.1 on it (amiga is still CD-less).
It boots up in 6 seconds.
It's really fast and nice to use in Multiscan Productivety with maximum overscan. :-)