PIV SD/FF vs Indivision SD/FF Question

[dougal]

The SD/FF of my Picasso IV is brilliant and works flawlessly using SVGA CRT monitors but out of 3 LCD/TFT monitors i have only one of them worked when connected to it.

The Indivision claims to work will all LCD and CRT monitors. Why?

And why does most of my LCDs not work with the Picasso IV?

The only one that works for me is the 21" Widescreen LCD which i use for my main PC. I have a 15" LCD and a 17" LCD and both do not work. One says out of range and the other simply goes into powersave mode.

Why would a 150 Euro SD/FF be better than a 250 Euro full RTG Gfx card/SD/FF?

[Moto]

I've tried at least 3 different LCDs on my Picasso IV and gotten them all to work.  Having said that, it does take a bit of leg work to get the PicassoIV's display timings set to your LCD's timings.  I would first start with getting the manufacturer's specs for the LCD and then use the P-IV display software to adjust/test each mode.  

Also there is a generic LCD profile on aminet that gives you a good starting place.  Sorry I don't have the link handy.

[alexh]

Have you tried to change the SD/FF settings to alter the output scan rate?

I bet you've still got it set to it's default of 50Hz.

Chapter 6

Use PicassoModeTNG to change the settings.

[Lockon_15]

@dougal
 
"Why would a 150 Euro SD/FF be better than a 250 Euro full RTG Gfx card/SD/FF? "
Price doesn't always reflect the end user value, primarily the break point of demand and supply.
 
Facts:
 
1. You're comparing 2 products from a large time distance, well over 10 years.
From IT standpoint it's something like comparing Pentium MMX 200 with Core 2 Duo. Almost all electronic components used in PIV are no longer produced, procured or being ROHS compliant (an important condition for Euro-zone); on contrast, Indivison has current, off-the shelf components which provide physical shrinking enough to fit to all Amiga models.
 
2. Indivision (ECS even more) is direct result of Amiga chipset reverse engineering. A lot of custom fine tuning and tweaking is done in order to provide the currently best possible image quality. Most of PIV features including pros/cons are either present in current production Indivision or a projected feature for some time ahead. Raw power used in all 11 FPGA cores outclass overall PIV by large fraction.
 
3. Indivision is designed with LCD as primary display interface. There are some inherent disadvantages (scrolling, tearing) which limit it's superior performance to specific range of LCD monitors (50Hh vertical refresh). PIV had no such limitations. But even with that in mind, Indivision ECS can provide vertical refresh of 75Hh, maybe even 100Hz in case of LCD ready to accept that input. So that can be a sort of unleashed potential, I guess.
 
4. At the end, altough Indivision ECS is currently only a SD/FF, it might also became a RTG. Also, it had already shown dual-head capability in stacked configuration. For that and other fact, the price difference between those 2 can only be less important.
 
It all bounds to a personal preference, what do you want to do with your Amiga.
Regards.

[Crumb]

Why would a 150 Euro SD/FF be better than a 250 Euro full RTG Gfx card/SD/FF?

Indivision provides rock solid super-hires screens. PicassoIV just skips some columns. It's quite noticeable in some demos but it's not very important if you are not interested in demoscene

[alexh]

@Crumb
Do many demos use SuperHighRes screens though?

@ Lockon_15
1) Indivision AGA isn't a gfx card.
2) RAW bandwidth of PIV is much higher. Just see how HighGfx sucks speed wise compared to PIV RTG screens.
3) Picasso IV scandoubler has similar capabilities in that it can scan rate convert too. No doubt that it is inferior to Indivision AGA but the PIV's RTG more than makes up for it.
4) Indivision AGA can be difficult to fit and it's connection reliability long term is unknown.

How can the Indivision cards become RTG cards? They don't have a direct connection to the 680x0 bus so I imagine they are limited to exisit in Chip RAM address space and so have to compete with all the other Amiga custom chips for bus access? Without another bus connection to the CPU, I imagine that RTG performance would be poor?

Such a shame they didn't make a Zorro III GFX card slot version of Indivision AGA for A4000.

I paid less than £150 for both my PIV cards second hand.

[Lockon_15]

Alexh,
 
Most of my assumptions should have been clearly put with regard to the Indivision ECS, sorry my fault. I-AGA is more "classic" SD/FF while I-ECS has a load of Clone-A DNA in it, hence the general focus on it. As for other mentioned, I suggest you take a look at some really interesting I-ECS development on A1K.org; I wouldn't bet that some part of RTG functionality won't be developed for I-ECS in near future.
 
 
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51354
 
P.S.
2xPIV for 150 quids...what are the odds of that steal happening again ?
Astronomical I guess. You're lucky.

[rkauer]

Indivision AGA is "almost" a graphics card as it gives a few more screen modes to the Amiga via HighGFX (OK, 1280x1024 @36Hz, which is impossible to show in anything but via Indy). Why almost? Because it uses the Amiga native graphics system and then SD and adjust the output frequency to something a LCD or VGA CRT monitor can understand.

 That's not what's happens with a "dumb" old scandoubler/flickerfixer. Even the best of the old ones.

[alexh]

@lockon
Thanks for the link. I'm still very curious to know how it can work well when it is contending for bus access with all other Amiga custom chips. I wish I truely knew about the bus architecture of the Amiga. Perhaps the Denise's register / data interface is connected to a different bus, separate from other chip-ram accesses, capable of being accessed simultaneously with the CPU?

2xPIV for 150 quids...what are the odds of that steal happening again ?

I think you misunderstand. 2xPIV for 300 quids (150 each)

[dougal]

Very true the PIV is an Amazing graphics card and the RTG by far makes up for the SD/FF not being quite as good as the Indivision (Although it is very very good).

I originally wanted just a SD/FF like the Indivision, but since none of the Indivisions are compatible with the A4000T i decided to go the whole way and get the PIV which i am so glad i did, because i can see the Amiga do so much more with much more speed than i ever thought possible on an Amiga.

I also had a ScanMagic SD/FF but that wouldnt fit either.

@Crumb
3) Picasso IV scandoubler has similar capabilities in that it can scan rate convert too. No doubt that it is inferior to Indivision AGA but the PIV's RTG more than makes up for it.

[Lockon_15]

@alexh
m8, I see you're receiving a royal treatment over on A1K.
I feel heat on this thread

[alexh]

They said exactly what I thought they would which is the bus which the Indivision ECS is on is slow and subject to contention with the other Amiga chips making it much slower than Zorro III which means it's potential as an RTG framebuffer card is diminished somewhat.

They claim to have 7Mbytes/sec transfer rates. If this is an average speed, under load, this is better than Zorro II (4Mbyte/s) so there is hope.

Still, if you have an Indivision-ECS it's a nice free function.

[Crumb]

@Crumb
Do many demos use SuperHighRes screens though?

There are some that use static super-hires ham8 screens (TBL's captured dreams for example, Rain too IIRC). Other less frequent effect uses one super-hires pixel for each RGB component and picassoIV*just shows rubbish but I just have seen a pair of "experiments" that used that mode.

PicassoIV still has some advantages on CRT monitors as you can raise AGA refresh to 100Hz easily. I prefer Indivision but PicassoIV flickerfixer is very good.

[stefcep2]

Anyone know what the use of a P96 monitor driver for AGA was