Egg-Chen wrote:
The Falcon030 seems to have both Planar and chunky because the Gfx chip allow the use of 256 colors on screen out of a 262144 colors palette, or 65535 colors out of 65535 colors palette (without color limitations like the HAM mode) in its 2 distinct video modes.
The hicolor mode is chunky, but the other modes are not. An 8-bit chunky mode would have made quite a difference, since it's much easier to manipulate than a hicolor mode.
Maybe the Amiga designers should have gone this way when designing the AGA chipset, the Falcon030 proves it was not impossible, and the Gfx chip also remains compatible with the old ST video modes too...
It's far from impossible, but as someone pointed out, you'll have to write new drivers for the system. Compatibility with old apps is no problem as long as you keep the possibility of using legacy resolutions. There is a hardware project for the CT60 (060 expansion for the falcon) which intends to do this. Basically it aims to be register compatible with the original VIDEL chip, but adds 24-32 bit truecolor capabilities as well as 8 bit chunky modes.
