Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: guest1255 on June 16, 2004, 01:24:26 PM
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I just realize that my A2000 2.0rom 3.1workbench 8mb memory cant show 256 color desktop...
What do i need to get to my amiga that i can see more than 256 colors? What is the cheapest way :)?
TIA. Apache2k
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256 colour workbench is the maximum you can get without a graphics card. :-(
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Now i can see only 16 colors, hmmm ....
cant even force it to use 256 colors...
Apache2k
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mhhh . . . 256 colors on a OCS-ECS machine?
Only AGA make it possible.
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Im not sure but i think its ECS. It says 1 mb grphics memory.
Apache2k.
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Even with AGA, on a decent res (let's say approximately 640x480), 256 colour display, it will crawl.
Graphics card.
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Damn... this means i have to get a graphics card?
And i was thinking that its enough spending money for amigas :) ...
Thank you all for the information.
Apache2k
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Yup you will need one. If you use your A2000 much its a great investment. I have seen a lot of them on the US ebay these last few months. I think with OS4 pre out now you will see even more stuff once it hits the US. I can see some great deals on the classic stuff in the near future.
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I have seen some also on eBay but the problem is only a few of them will ship to europe.. i guess i have to wait mine for a loooooong time.
Apache2k
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Ham Workbench for more available colours (cdn spelling) without a graphics card. It allows Ham (4096,200K colour) modes options in Workbench Prefs. Hamwb on aminet I think. It was written by a guy I went to university with.
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Framiga wrote:
mhhh . . . 256 colors on a OCS-ECS machine?
Oops, forgot the 2000 wasn't AGA :-)
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I just checked. It's hamwb.lha on Aminet.
Run Workbench in 4096 or 262144 colors.
speed would depend on your setup.
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Man, that must drag. I can't imagine, even on my 030/25 A3000 with 2MB of chip running a HAM desktop.
Hmmm .... maybe I should try this as well? :-)
- Mike
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Apache2k wrote:
I have seen some also on eBay but the problem is only a few of them will ship to europe.. i guess i have to wait mine for a loooooong time.
Apache2k
I would be more then willing to send it out to you if yo want to bid on a card and have the seller ship it to me. Just send me a PM and we will set it all up. You can also look up my username paulrezendes on ebay to see my feedback for a good idea of my ratings.
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will Cybervision 64/3d work on 68000? or should it be 68020 min?
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pretty sure it's 020+ which means you'll have to buy an accelerator too! :-)
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I cant belive i get a Cybervision graphics card next week and also a Turbocad 68040 @ 25 :) The only think is im not sure if my good old A2000 rev6 will like that turbocard. ( Anybody know?)
Thanks for all the tips.
Apache2k
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When you have your Cybervision you can skip 8bit mode, true color is much much better :-D
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Apache2k, I'm interested to see how you get on with your current set of upgrades, if you could keep this thread posted.
I imagine an old 'big box' Amiga like an A2k or A3k would be quite cheap unexpanded, that the upgrade path doesn't look quite so high-investment as it appears to be with my A1200.
Only problem I can think of is IDE, A2k/3k is SCSI isn't it? How could I stick an IDE disk in it, how much for the expansion parts needed (I have disks spare)?
A run-down of cost to get an unexpanded A2k/A3k to run say WB3.1, IDE disks, and a reasonable graphics card for 2D decent resolutions and colours, would be interesting to read.
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Hi Apache2k,
IIRC A2000 rev 6, is OK :-)
Only the earlier rev 4 has some problem with HD controllers and so.
Ciao
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Hi mikeykike,
only the A2000HD model, has SCSI (IIRC through a A2091 controller).
http://amiga.emugaming.com/a2000.html
Ciao
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Well i have two options:
All the parts will fit and ill get a Turbo Amiga2000
Or ill have nice parts to sell on eBay :))
My 3.0 rom is also arriving soon...
I cant wait that ill get all theparts and can start working on it :)
Apache2k
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Could someone with decent knowledge of the A2k/A3k do a writeup of the practical, upgrade potential of it? I'm fairly sure I could find a permanent place for the article on Amiga.org.
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@Apache2k
Yes the OCS and ECS Amigas use up to 16 colors only in Highres Interlaced mode. I think this is quite fine and it works for me on an A600 with 68030 33mhz and 32mb of ram. What you really should add is:
VisualPrefs
MagicMenu
ToolsDaemon
MUI
to reduce the flickering seriously. Also dont settle for less, get the 3.1 Roms, not the 3.0! and get the MEGACHIP for 2 megs of chipram.
the 68040 is good and I guess a gfx card is good too. I have never used a gfx card and dont plan to as I mostly do video and dont want my NTSC compatibility screwed up. I love my setup as it all runs in Video modes (704 x 480) or so. I also have an A2000 with 68040 and Megachip
Also, you could run WB in 32 colors if you put the resolution in LoRes (320 x 200) with autoscroll, and it could look nice with the right icons and visual prefs etc..
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Yes,,That could be very interesting subject if there would be part here for the classic/non classic amigas...how far you can upgrade with what components...
I bet many users would like that , i would :)
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I just checked. It's hamwb.lha on Aminet.
Run Workbench in 4096 or 262144 colors.
speed would depend on your setup.
Does anyone have any experience with using this on 3.1? I had been using the Rebel16 palette and tried to switch to Ham6 laced using HamWB but it has just messed all my colours up.
The wallpaper looks worse than the 16 colour version. How is this supposed to be used?
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You need a picture with lots of colors, open it with Deluxe pain or PPaint or what ever wich upports HAM. Save it to use HAM. Thats for backdrop, I have no idee how to get icons use HAM? Maybe peterk's new icon.library supports HAM?
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Even with AGA, on a decent res (let's say approximately 640x480), 256 colour display, it will crawl.
Graphics card.
With Peter K's excellent ICON library even 800x600 is workable in AGA @ 256 color depth :)
[youtube]8C-YBBU5Yjo[/youtube]
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With Peter K's excellent ICON library even 800x600 is workable in AGA @ 256 color depth :)
Sure, but don't you also have something like an 80MHz '060? ;)
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Sure, but don't you also have something like an 80MHz '060? ;)
Not anymore my friend :(
Seriously though, with the correct patches and the new icon.library a 256/128 color desktop is usable on AGA for most processors.
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Usable is in the eye of the beholder. :)
64 colors is the absolute maximum if sluggish displays bother a person regardless of CPU being used. To each their own, but I don't know how novacoder can stand that sort of performance. It drives me batty.
Other than sluggish displays though, chipram is a big consideration. 128/256 colors puts a serious dampener on amount of screens concurrently usable, along with their resolutions and color depths. And yes, this is even with fblit, ftext, cyberbugfix, etc. Installed.
And really, a well constructed palette, especially at higher resolutions, makes a massive difference. 16 colors is maybe a couple too few, so dithering, etc. will always be apparent, but up that to 32colors, or 64 and some creativity, time and effort can result in a desktop that looks as nice as anything out there.
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640x512 256 colors works here very well and fast.
fishy_fis: You haven't configured FBlit right if you have speed problems with 256 colors.
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I don't know. I've never tried something like HAMWB.
Try it out, report back and upload a screenshot. Thanks!
(Don't use background images or patterns)
I asked would icon.library work with HAM screen
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I asked would icon.library work with HAM screen
Depends on your definition of "works". Yes, it will render icons correctly, but it will only use the colors in the palette for that (16 colors). You can still use a HAM background image, though may observe artefacts at edges.
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@utri007
Nope, all configured correctly.
Heck, you'd have a completely unusable system without it. Couldn't have more than 2 screens open.
As I said, usable is in the eye of the beholder.
256 colors is too slow for my tastes when using aga. Period.
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Depends on your definition of "works". Yes, it will render icons correctly, but it will only use the colors in the palette for that (16 colors). You can still use a HAM background image, though may observe artefacts at edges.
Peterk has made icon.library replacement wich supoort quite much every possible icon format natively. I can even use OS4 icons with it, etc.
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Peterk has made icon.library replacement wich supoort quite much every possible icon format natively. I can even use OS4 icons with it, etc.
Yes true you can use almost every icon format with peterk's icon library and it's really much faster, like a hell of a lot faster,major speed increase!
Also big dir's with a 100 icons/drawers almost load instantly now on my A600 with V600, even the prefs drawer loads instantly now :D
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Peterk has made icon.library replacement wich supoort quite much every possible icon format natively. I can even use OS4 icons with it, etc.
Yes, but your point is? It is still not able to render icons with HAM colors except the 16 palette colors in the HAM palette, simply because this is beyond its responsibility. As soon as the icons are moved around, they are simply graphics.library GELs, and graphics knows only very little of the workings of HAM. In particular, it does not contain any code that recomputes a given GEL when repositioning on a HAM background. This is a major art completely outside of the Os, and in particular of the icon.library.
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@utri007
Nope, all configured correctly.
Heck, you'd have a completely unusable system without it. Couldn't have more than 2 screens open.
As I said, usable is in the eye of the beholder.
256 colors is too slow for my tastes when using aga. Period.
That doesn't sound right regarding your two screen limit. What resolution are these screens and what are they? I also have no complaint regarding speed of 256 colour modes with FBlit, but like you say, it depends on individual tastes. 64 colour screens I found plenty fast even when I was running a 68020 A1200 with Fast RAM only.
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I agree with fishy_fiz that an AGA 256 color workbench is just not smooth/fast enough for use, at least for me either. Layer.library patched, Fblit in use and definitely configured properly. However...my system was using a monitor that required DblNTSC which eats a ton of bandwidth of the chipset as well. I installed an Indivision AGA MKIIcr but still kept color resolution at 32 colors.
Granted, I had mostly been using Amithlon (1680x1050 @ 32bit color) and WinUAE 1680x1050 @ 32bit color) displays for AmigaOS, so switching to an Amiga 4000D/T the 256 color displays on those were horribly slow.
If I was running a stock setup, I'd lean towards 32 colors with FBlit to keep everything more responsive.
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Thomas: Thanks for the clarifigation.
OK, I understand, speed is a opinion. At least we all agree that FBlit makes huge difference. :)
Sad that there hasn't been any further develobment with FBlit. :( Original author has a plan to make a FBlit screenmode, that would make things easier and faster to test.
By the way, FBlit sources https://github.com/SamuraiCrow/fblit
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I'm another one using FBlit on AGA/Indivison and finds that 256 colours is too slow and memory consuming. 64 colours is optimum for me on OS3.9. There is no colour benefit to Newicons if you increase to 128 colours it seems also.
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Agree you will need a decent graphics card for your 2000. ECS and AGA for that matter are just to slow with a large palette and high resolution.
For a 2000 a nice Picasso II or Spectrum are decent budget choices. Never ran them on a 68k system though.
For Z3 systems a CV64, BLT Z3, or Picasso IV are nice solid choices.
A good graphic card will make a much bigger improvement than a faster cpu.
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Maybe go for the Indivision ECS or even better the VampireII.
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For a 2000 a nice Picasso II or Spectrum are decent budget choices. Never ran them on a 68k system though.
The P96 software requires at least a 68020. It does not run on a plain 68000.
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A full 32bit '020 as well if memory serves correctly (ie. won't work with 68ec020).
I think we're all a bit bored here by the way. Original post was years ago and his questions well and truly answered. :)
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HAM8 icons work just fine.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=204&pictureid=1383
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I'm another one using FBlit on AGA/Indivison and finds that 256 colours is too slow and memory consuming. 64 colours is optimum for me on OS3.9. There is no colour benefit to Newicons if you increase to 128 colours it seems also.
Add PeterK's icon.library and it will be faster. Newicons i thought were 32 colors?