ECS Denise.. is it worth it ?

[Nostalgiac]

Hi people

I was thinking of getting an ECS Denice for my a2000 but I wonder if it is worth it - 9 euros only but would it actually be usefull ?

a2000 with os 3.9 and any day now a 2060/48mb (UK Royal Mail ... grr...)

ta
Tom

[hipoonios]

Not worth it. I personaly dont know any apps or games that require ECS... and you dont notice any changes anyway in workbench etc.. Because there is no software that take advance of the ECS chip. No big differences between OCS and ECS.

[amiga92570]

thats right, there are few ECS programs. Most old stuff uses OCS and the newer stuff is AGA. I would save money for something more usefull like a graphics card. :-)

[Argus]

Adoom used ECS for half-brite mode, iirc.  There may be some other games as well.

[fx]

Doesn't it give "Borderblank"-functionality? If it does, I would say it's worth it

[Piru]

@Argus

Adoom used ECS for half-brite mode, iirc.

OCS Denise has half-brite aswell (only the very first A1000 chips didn't have it).

There may be some other games as well.

I can't remember any requiring ECS Denise.

[Brian]

If you don't have a graphixcard then I'd say grabb it. It gives you a few more screenmodes/colordepths. Result in programs that use more colors or can use custom screens with own color settings (such as DeluxePaint and other paint programs aswell as DOpus) will also gain more screenmodes/colordepths to play with.

But if I where you I'd concider saving the money for a graphixcard instead.

[Zac67]

ECS Denise adds 'special' video modes like DblPAL, DblNTSC, Productivity, SuperHires - whatever they're worth in ECS.

@Brian
Nope, no additional color depth modes.
Essentially ECS adds the SuperHires mode (double pixel clock, half color depth) and flexible horizontal scan rates. Everything else would require more bandwidth.

[Piru]

@Zac67

ECS Denise adds 'special' video modes like DblPAL, DblNTSC, Productivity

Actually only Productivity (640 x 480) and Superhires (1280 x h), and with only 4 colours.

DblPAL and DblNTSC are AGA.

Wikipedia:  Enhanced Chip Set (Note: Some of the features listed there are from ECS Agnus)

@Nostalgiac

It's not worth it, really.

[AmigaHope]

Actually DblPAL and DblNTSC *DO* work in ECS.

ECS had two major changes, one of which was the improved blitter (could blit more in one instruction, although the time to blit wasn't much improved since it was still memory bandwidth limited).

The other big change was programmable scanrates. Vertical refresh and horizontal refresh could now be set to arbitrary values within the supported ranges. To support this, higher pixel clock settings were made available, with the limitation that the faster pixel clock modes could only have 2 bitplanes.

Every AGA graphics mode works fine on ECS, as ECS supports exactly the same scanrates as AGA. It's just to do DBLPal/DBLNTSC/etc. you have to set the pixel clock to its highest speed, which limites you to 2 bitplanes/4 colors.

Note that it's actually possible to use a lower pixel clock on a high scanrate screen! For instance you could do DBLPal scanrates, but halve the pixel clock, and have a 320x512 screen in 16 colors on ECS.

[LoadWB]

Argus wrote:
Adoom used ECS for half-brite mode, iirc.  There may be some other games as well.

Yeah!  That's why I bought mine from Grapevine Group for my original 500 way back when... then found out that play was almost unbearable on my GVP A530.  :-)

@Piru

OCS Denise had half-brite?  I no longer have specific documentation, but all my reading said that I *had* to have ECS.  hrmmmm, money not well spent, it seems.  But I did have fun playing with Double-HiRes for a short time (made the computer slow, IIRC.)

[Piru]

@LoadWB

OCS Denise had half-brite?

Yes.

[Piru]

@AmigaHope

Interesting, I was quite certain that there were some more limitations in ECS Denise. Anyway, I think these modes pretty much drain all time from CPU (well at least memory accesses) while displayed, so the usability is quite limited.

Never had ECS Denise myself, only "half-ECS" A500 (OCS Denise, ECS Agnus).

[Nostalgiac]

correct me if I'm wrong,

but would Productivity indeed deliver 640x480 @60Hz = VGA ?

That would be enough reason for me.

I do have a flickerfixex, but the 50Hz of it still means I need to use an old extra monitor instead of simply connecting the 2000 to my every day monitor.

ta
Tom

[SimonV]

What I would like to see is a "denise-switcher" like you have kickstartswitches. switching between ECS and OCS would be nice . I can use the ECS resolutions for my workbench on my multiscan, and switch to OCS for the old games.

And do not tell me to buy a graphicscard, I am talking about my A500