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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Vanfanel on February 20, 2010, 04:27:46 PM
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I just recently acquired myself an A1200 (NTSC), and of course I'm most pleased with it. But I have no SC/FF as of yet. From what I've been reading, the Indivision AGA 1200 is the best to have, but we're all aware of the wait involved.
So my question is, is it worth it to wait, or are there other solutions that would be just as good?
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It's the best solution, and it'll be similarly priced to other scandoublers you find on the second-hand market. And you need to wait for one of those to turn up as well :)
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Well check this post:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=544023&postcount=16
It is an external scandoubler at less than half the cost of the Indivision. It is different, of course, and you can buy it now!
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Some of those external boxes do not support the 24-bit AGA modes. I don't have any experience with the one from Australia, but the price sure is attractive. The one on eBay right now for $100 though (white box with screw adjustment), I used to have on my A1200. I didn't care for it at all. Too much, what looked to be, RF interference, vertical lines running through the screen AND that fringe distortion on the left had side of the screen seems to be "normal" with those particular FF/SD's.
Indivision is about the best modern solution I've seen yet. From what I've used, only the Phase 5 video card combo boards best that one, but you're going to pay more getting one of those into your system than Jens' product! :lol:
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@save2600
Read the post! :)
You are getting confused by another device!
The solution i suggest costs 70 USD including shipping and supports 24 bit AGA modes. It is actually two devices connected together: an Amiga RGB to SVHS converter + a SVHS to VGA adapter, and none of them is white.
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I wasn't referring to your solution at all Gulliver - just pointing out that one must be careful when choosing external FF/SD options for an A1200 :)
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Yes, you are right, my fault. :)
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I discussed this issue with Gulliver a few months ago and decided to take this route. The image quality over SVHS is really quite decent, but one problem I found out is that it is dark. I don't know how to describe it accurately, maybe the contrast is too high, but it is really noticeable. When you have dark scenes in games or demos details are hard to see and some color combinations are really difficult to make out (like brown on dark blue etc.). It is evident even on small things like the WHDload load screen where the normal pattern blurs into solid dark blue. The picture over Composite is much less sharp and the colours bleed, but the brightness is significantly more natural.
Maybe it is possible to tune it somehow, but I haven't been able to so far.
Also the SVHS->VGA box gets quite hot.
Does anybody else have these problems with SVHS?
Otherwise the solution works fine, but this annoys me a lot.
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Well check this post:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=544023&postcount=16
It is an external scandoubler at less than half the cost of the Indivision. It is different, of course, and you can buy it now!
It will get him by. Long term solution is to get the indivision.
scandoubler vs flicker fixer. big difference esp if you start going higher resolutions with graphics card.
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If you start using a graphics card how does it increase your need of Indivision???
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If you start using a graphics card how does it increase your need of Indivision???
Lets say you have a picasso 2 card and you're feeding the vga back into flicker fixer. you cannot do that with the scandoubler from australia (no vga input).
mind you we're getting off tangent because few people have a1200+graphics card (unless they towerize).
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I just recently acquired myself an A1200 (NTSC), and of course I'm most pleased with it. But I have no SC/FF as of yet. From what I've been reading, the Indivision AGA 1200 is the best to have, but we're all aware of the wait involved.
So my question is, is it worth it to wait, or are there other solutions that would be just as good?
I'd wait; plus there's been some noise over on the English Amiga Board about writing a p96 driver and using the Indy as a straight up video card as well as scandoubler (that was my understanding, anyway).
So yeah, Indy FTW.
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I discussed this issue with Gulliver a few months ago and decided to take this route. The image quality over SVHS is really quite decent, but one problem I found out is that it is dark. I don't know how to describe it accurately, maybe the contrast is too high, but it is really noticeable. When you have dark scenes in games or demos details are hard to see and some color combinations are really difficult to make out (like brown on dark blue etc.). It is evident even on small things like the WHDload load screen where the normal pattern blurs into solid dark blue. The picture over Composite is much less sharp and the colours bleed, but the brightness is significantly more natural.
Maybe it is possible to tune it somehow, but I haven't been able to so far.
Also the SVHS->VGA box gets quite hot.
Does anybody else have these problems with SVHS?
Otherwise the solution works fine, but this annoys me a lot.
@koshman
I guess i am lucky enough to use a LCD monitor/TV in which i can adjust contrast brightness, and gamma thru an OSD menu, so i dont get that contrast issue. Anyway you can allways finetune the RGB>SVHS converter, it has a built in trimmer for adjusting the signal.
And yes the SVHS>VGA adapter gets incredibly hot, but i simply added a cheap PC cooler cutting a bit of the case of the device, and soldering the 2 proper supply wires, and voila, no heat problems.
@B00tDisk
Could you please point me out the thread of the Picasso96 driver for the Indivision on EAB? I must have missed it!
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@koshman
I guess i am lucky enough to use a LCD monitor/TV in which i can adjust contrast brightness, and gamma thru an OSD menu, so i dont get that contrast issue.
That's not a failsafe guarantee for avoiding problems, though. My monitor's brightness/contrast are maxed out, and my screen is still incredibly dark. I think a lot of that is due to the multiple switchboxes my monitor goes through, but YMMV.
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I'd wait; plus there's been some noise over on the English Amiga Board about writing a p96 driver and using the Indy as a straight up video card as well as scandoubler (that was my understanding, anyway).
So yeah, Indy FTW.
You can do that with an Indivision ECS, but not an Indivision AGA.
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You can do that with an Indivision ECS, but not an Indivision AGA.
Ahh...thank you for that clarification, grasshopper. I did not know.
(Still that brings the awesomeness of the ECS machine to the forefront, no? :) )
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Lets say you have a picasso 2 card and you're feeding the vga back into flicker fixer. you cannot do that with the scandoubler from australia (no vga input).
mind you we're getting off tangent because few people have a1200+graphics card (unless they towerize).
Your not just getting out on a tangent, you are posting complete nonsense ...
There is absolutly NO flickerfixer or scandoubler that allows a VGA-signal to be feeded in.
On the other side there are plenty GFX-cards that have an extra input allwoing you to feed the FF's output into GFX-card. Well not really into the GFX-card as it will just route them over some relais directly to the cards VGA-out.
The glorious exception is the Picasso4 which has a inbuild FF that will use the actual VGA-logic on the card.
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You can do that with an Indivision ECS, but not an Indivision AGA.
Do what exactly?
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Your not just getting out on a tangent, you are posting complete nonsense ...
There is absolutly NO flickerfixer or scandoubler that allows a VGA-signal to be feeded in.
Perhaps he was thinking about the P2 accepting a VGA signal and passing it through as the benefit would be a single monitor solution? In a goofy, not paying too much attention to the wording (something you learn to do on the 'Net: reading for content, not accuracy) round-a-bout way, that's how I took it anyway. :lol:
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Do what exactly?
Someone was talking about the ECS version of Indivision being able to perform double-duty as a dedicated "video card" (using P96 or some kind of driver) and a FF/SD. I've never heard of that and would kinda be surprised if that capability is built into it somehow. BUT...
Only thing I know of that the ECS version can do over the AGA is be piggybacked with another ECS Indivision (one on top of the other) for the benefit of having an extended Workbench, dual monitor type setup.
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The Indivision ECS emulates the Graffiti (http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/graffiti_e.htm) directly.
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Cool! I've heard of this device. Now... with that many colors possible from the ECS architecture - what programs or games would be designed to take advantage of it? I always thought it enhanced the video output, not replaced it.
Is this a stepping stone to having AGA emulation on ECS machines finally? And how come this Graffiti business wasn't spoken about near the time and shortly after its release?
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Also the Indivision ECS has direct memory access now with the new firmware. You can do up to 1024x768 true 12 bit with a 15/16 bit internal memory setup. They have a picture viewer that supports this mode. A3000 might work well with this but I doubt a simple 68000 would be very fast.
Here is a previous thread on the feature.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51354&highlight=indivision
Here is a brief overview again.
following features:
- 8-bit, 15 bit, 16 bit chunky pixel modes (15 bit & 16 bits are converted) to 12 bits.
- Resolution from 320x200 to 1024x768.
- Video memory can be directly described by DMA chipset (up to 7,15 MB / s)!
- Sprite for hardware cursor.
- Addressable storage for multiple video image buffer.
- Dual screen on two Indivision ECS.
Also it looks like a new ECS mode 800x600 with 16 colors is in the works..
Pretty cool. I hope something good comes from it.
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save2600: thank you for correcting my suggestion.
I had a long day, made a mistake and have not posted on this site for long time. Kronos has no life and instead of calling someone's content nonsense should have realized or corrected it. Anyway, why do people bash each other? This is very common in Amiga community: internal fighting.
My picasso 2 has Flicker fixer input and output where monitor gets its signal. Thats the reason why you may want to get indivision flicker fixer. I used the Cadwallen adapter and it works fine on AGA Amiga 4000 and ECS A2000. Good on many resolutions, not perfect but for the low price, not a bad deal.
Perhaps he was thinking about the P2 accepting a VGA signal and passing it through as the benefit would be a single monitor solution? In a goofy, not paying too much attention to the wording (something you learn to do on the 'Net: reading for content, not accuracy) round-a-bout way, that's how I took it anyway. :lol:
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> Kronos has no life
Doh, and there was me thinking that was common knowledge..
> and instead of calling someone's content nonsense should have realized or corrected it.
Well it was nonsense, and I did post the correct info, so what are you about ?
To be more precise, these pass-throughs on the GFX-card will switch any signal directly to your monitor. So if you have an old 15kHz compatible one you could just hook on the Amiga-RGB with no FF or SD inbetween. If your FF/SD works with your monitor it will still work after being passed through. So if that australian device works it would still work in combination with a GFX-card.
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I was suspecting that waiting for the Indivision would be the right approach, just wanted to run it by people that know more about all this stuff than I do. Thanks for all your input.
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Btw, when is the next batch of Indivision AGA supposed to be ready?
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Get an Indivision, it will provide crystal clear quality. SVideo adapters show a more blurry image (something in quality between composite video and RGB/Scart). Just look at the icon fonts of the screenshots.
And let's not talk about degrading smooth 24bit gradients into horrible 15bit gradients... Indivision is the best flickerfixer. It even allows you to configure your video output to 50Hz if your monitor allows that to get perfect scrolling.
SVideo + vga box = blurry pictures + jerky scrolling + poor ocs-like gradients.
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Btw, I recently found out that my earlier described problems with the SVIDEO->VGA solution (dark image, so so quality) are totally gone when I use it on A1200. Before I was using it on my A4000 and the IQ was acceptable, but nothing to write home about, plus it was unusually dark - no brightness/contrast/gamma correction settings I tried gave me a totally natural looking picture. So in the end I bought an Indivision for the A4000, which, of course, works fine.
I recently obtained an A1200 and tried the Amigamaniac's converter + VGA box combo on it and it works great! The picture is totally stable, the colours are correct and overall the quality of the output is very very close to the Indivision. I don't know if there's something wrong with my A4000, this is just heads up for anybody who might be thinking about trying the cheaper option on their A4000 that there possibly might be some issues. On A1200 I don't see a reason to buy Indivision if you're only after games/demos, the biggest (only) advantage is HighGFX.
Btw, HighGFX 1024x768 through Indivision on my A4000 is quite blurry. Is it normal? Considering the age of the host HW I guess it is I just wanna be sure. Thanks.
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I know that several of the added perks of the Indivision ECS came after it was produced and what not. Can we expect something of the same sort for the AGA version?