Pixel64 & Ateo Advice

[DanceDJ]

Hi can anyone give any advice on wether or not the pixel64 can show native Amiga games screens & if so how do I get it to do so?
Does anyone know how you get hold of any network card keyfiles they promised for free as ateo are long gone?

can't wait to get a mac & run os4 if it happens

Many Thanks

[zipper]

:
Hi can anyone give any advice on wether or not the pixel64 can show native Amiga games screens & if so how do I get it to do so?

Principally not. But the latest versions of P96 have a fakenative driver mode, that worked under my tests (years ago) with about 30-40% of floppy games on my PicassoIV.

[DanceDJ]

Ok thanks for that, I have a PIV in my 4000T & that seems to do all games! The pixel64 is in a spare 1200 tower I was going to sell after setting up the drivers correctly.

[Piru]

I have a PIV in my 4000T & that seems to do all games!

That's because PIV has a built-in flickerfixer and native video pass-through.

[spirantho]

No, a Pixel64 can't show any Amiga games screens... you'll need a graphics card with a scandoubled pass-through like the Picasso IV or the CV64/3D to do that or a multisync monitor and a switch box.

[zipper]

Not true, read my post about fakenative again - but it's just a partial solution. I'd been overly happy if F1GP had worked - but it didn't.

[spirantho]

zipper wrote:
Not true, read my post about fakenative again - but it's just a partial solution. I'd been overly happy if F1GP had worked - but it didn't.

Well, kinda, but very few games will work with it, maybe 1 or 2%, which would usually work with other graphics cards drivers anyway.

AFAIK the FakeNative mode are a planar emulation mode which converts from planar bitmap memory model as used by OCS/ECS/AGA to chunky mode as used by the graphics card. The game would still need to use the OS for its display, and almost anything that does that uses the OS calls to actually render too so would work on a graphics card anyway.

I think the only major use for the FakeNative mode is for Deluxe Paint or something (from memory) but I could be wrong there.

Any game that uses the blitter or copper or anything else like that won't work on the Pixel64 no matter what screenmode you're in because the card just doesn't have the right kind of blitter and the Amiga's one can't access the framebuffer and wouldn't know what to do with it if it could.

If you had an MMU I suppose you could trap the calls to the Blitter and reroute them to an emulation but it wouldn't be nice and probably wouldn't work right anyway!

[zipper]

Well, kinda, but very few games will work with it, maybe 1 or 2%, which would usually work with other graphics cards drivers anyway.

I tried over 40 floppy based older mostly OCS/ECS games and my success rate was about 40%.

[spirantho]

Are you sure they were using the FakeNative modes and not the pass-through on your P-IV though?

Remember, the Pixel64 has no pass-through....

It is physically impossible to run 30-40% of disk games on a graphics card, because for starters there's no way for the game to talk to the card unless you load Workbench, which very very few (5% or so if that) games did.

The P-IV when running games just took the graphics display as output to the monitor and converted it to VGA scanrates, then displayed that. It's not actually displaying anything itself at all, it's just re-routing the display signal. The Pixel64 has no capability to do that.

[Piru]

@zipper

Fakenative only works with OS friendly games and apps, so this 40% figure is clearly wrong.

Code: [Select]

 - *NEW FEATURE*: added functionality to patch the most common native
    Amiga chipset screen modes to use a Picasso96 board to ease use and
    installation of Picasso96 on systems that don't have a native Amiga
    chipset (like the Macrosystem Draco) or that have no monitor attached
    to the native chip set signal connector or that don't have a flicker
    fixer and no 15 kHz capable monitor. To enable this feature add the
    tool type "FakeNativeModes=Yes" to the monitor driver of one of your
    cards (defaults to "Yes" with the Draco Altais and "No" for all other
    cards) and remove all native Amiga monitor drivers (!). Now, when the
    system uses one of the native Amiga screen modes (currently only
    LowRes, HighRes and SuperHighRes and their interlaced counter parts),
    a 640x480 31kHz 60Hz screen mode on the graphics card will be used.
    Note: this mode is not configurable and it is not intended to be,
    because you should use real Picasso96 screen mode IDs whenever you
    can. Its only intention is to get the workbench on a VGA compatible
    screen when the current screenmode.prefs contains an invalid mode
    id. May also be useful for some (stupid) programs that default to a
    custom screen with a native Amiga screen mode after installation.


As stated already, PicassoIV has a flickerfixer and pass thru for the original video signal. That is why games work with it.