GFX cards

[Ilwrath]

@mel ott-

I bought a GFX card (Firecracker 24) in hopes of improving the speed and general display on my A3k.  I haven't plugged it in yet. I started wondering,
is this card going to give me better GFX than the
stock (2 mg. Agnes) chip?? I don't do any vidio
editing or anything like that, just games and
net serfing.

Well, a 24 bit video card is a big improvement over the stock Amiga's video.  The problem is, the Firecracker 24 is a video editing card.  As far as I can tell, it's not supported under CyberGraphX or Picasso96.

What that means, is the only time it'll be in use is when you're editing video or displaying 24-bit images.  The 24 bit screenmodes generated by the card won't be available to Workbench, other applications, or games.  (only cards that are supported by CyberGraphX or Picasso96 can play games).  As far as I know, the only two cards that can use a 24 bit workbench that AREN'T supported in CGX/Picasso are the RetinaZ2 and OpalVision24, and I don't believe either of those works well for workbench apps, such as web browsers, etc...  They're specialty video cards.  (I've run into this problem, as I'm a Retina Z2 owner in an older machine.  It's been on the "Plan to support in future release" list for many years, now...)

With the Firecracker, for Workbench (surfing, chatting, whatever) you'll still be using your standard Amiga ECS graphics, instead of the card.  Games will also only be able to use the Amiga's graphics, as they won't know how to initialize anything to the video card.

....At least that's how I understand it.  Unfortunatly.

[Ilwrath]

@Quixote-
Hmm...  If you have an OpalVision, you'd probably know better than me.  I just could have sworn that back in the day I saw a demo of a 24 bit OpalBench, which was a similiar setup to the RetinaEmu Workbench.  (More a 24 bit savvy workbench replacement than an actual RTG system)  Heck, maybe it WAS a Retina I saw back then.  It was a long time ago, and back when anything of that quality was WELL outside my price range in anything other than dreams.

@MelOtt-

I would think that the manufactures of these cards
would send a driver with them to allow them to be used with workbench and whatever.
If the Picasso or Cyber card have become the
defacto standard then the drivers should spoof
or emulate them.
 

Ahh... That's the problem.  The manufacturers of these cards typically went out of business before the idea of Retargetable Graphics (RTG) came into being.  As such, they couldn't write drivers for software packages (Picasso/CyberGraphX) that were released after their demise.  Some of these early cards also used some very nasty hardware trickery to create the 24 bit image, and may or may not be suitable to even be used in anything beyond what you can use HAM modes for on the native Amiga.  The teams for Picasso and CyberGraphX have tried to backport drivers for as many old cards as they can, but some remain on the fringe or unsupported.  Unfortunatly, from all the documentation I can find, the FireCracker remains one of those cards.  :-(