Workbench ... more questions (flickering)

[sim085]

Hi,

Yesterday I managed to install magic workbench on WinUAE. It looked good, however I remembered my brother had installed it once but did not use it because of the flickering.

Back then we had an old Amstrad Monitor for the A500+ and lately I bought the original 1084S D1 monitor. I therefore tried to use Magic Workbench again on the original hardware and found out that changing the monitor did not solve the problem!

Is there a way how to solve flickering problem on an A500+? Also would the Classic Workbench 64K version also result in flickering?

Thanks and Regards,
Sim085

[stefcep2]

The flicker you see is normal: its a TV resolution interlaced screen.  You can't fix it with the monitor you have.  You can choose a non-interlace screenmode, but everything willlook bigger and out of proportion.  

[sim085]

I found this but that is too overly complicated for my liking and experience

[stefcep2]

This is a flicker fixer, didn't know they made them for the A500, but it would do the trick

[anakirob]

You could run the MagicTV patch.

[Jiffy]

stefcep2 wrote:
This is a flicker fixer, didn't know they made them for the A500, but it would do the trick

They certainly did: I used to have a Multivision 500 back in the days, which fit snugly into the 'Denise'-socket. Worked great.

[sim085]

anakirob wrote:
You could run the MagicTV patch.

Does this only apply for the AGA chipset?

[leirbag28]

@sim085

Not sure why its flickering on WinUAE...that should not be happening.

But anyway...on a Real Amiga you can lessen it quite alot.

The key is to get these things:

Magic Menu
Tools Daemon
Visual Prefs

I know some are wondering how the heck these apps reduce Flickering when they never claim to?

Here is how:

Flickering is partially caused because of 2 contrasting lines that are like 1 pixel wide and one is black the other white.

Visual Prefs helps in this because you can make those lines instead of 1 pixel thick.... 2 pixels and perhaps more thicker. Also you can make those lines Dark Grey instead of black and Light grey instead of White.......... the result is less contrast between the two lines and slightly blending in more.

It works!  trust me.  and use magic Menu to make ToolsDaemon look Pretty (Make it Dark Gray with Darker Grey Borders for the Shadow and Lighter grey borders for the Shine (Visual Prefs)

ToolsDaemon is Amiga's REAL Start Menu.... you will never have to open a Drawer again.  Execute all things right from ToolsDaemon if you add them all that is.

[Khephren]

See if your TV suports NTSC as well. That runs at 60fps rather than PAL 50, would reduce flicker a little bit.
Also, wasn't there a hacked euro36 screen mode that worked on a normal TV and reduced flicker? might have just been on WB 3.0 though...

[sim085]

Khephren wrote:
See if your TV suports NTSC as well. That runs at 60fps rather than PAL 50, would reduce flicker a little bit.
Also, wasn't there a hacked euro36 screen mode that worked on a normal TV and reduced flicker? might have just been on WB 3.0 though...

I am building my new setup based on WB 3.1. However I do not wish to connect my A500+ to a TV set but rather to my 1084S monitor!

[Khephren]

Ah, ok. 1084S is a TV style monitor though, not proper a amiga  style multisync (I'm stretching the old memory back to the 90's, so bear with me!)
It should do 60hz, and so reduce your flicker, at the expense of resolution.

As somebody mentioned, there are tools to change the look of workbench. You should use them to eliminated single width vertical lines(by doubling up), and tone down harsh boundary contrast wherever you can.

That's the closest you'll get to flicker free in interlace on a TV style monitor.

Also I used to use the hacked euro36 driver (which should be somewhere on aminet), it worked on my old PAL 50hz portable telly, and reduced flicker to below that of even NTSC. Combined with tools mentioned above, you can almost (but never quite) eliminate flicker.

[sim085]

I think it was on English Amiga Board; I read that there was a version of MagicWB that could run in a lower resolution so to avoid flickering! Unfortunately the guy did not remember the link from where to download this. Does this really exist. Tried searching on Aminet but could not find anything like it.

[Khephren]

I think I remember what you are talking about. He just rescaled the icons so they looked good on a non interlaced hires screen. I don't know where they are now.
Might be worth asking on /eab.abime.net
I'll have a look on my old cover CD's see if I can find it.

[sim085]

I FOUND IT

I did another search on the English Amiga Board and found the post I had previously found;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=42149&highlight=Magic+Workbench

Here, someone named Bloodwych said that the small icons set is named SmallBench and it can be downloaded from here:

http://aminet.net/search?query=small+bench

I will give it a go when at home

[Khephren]

Nice one. Post a screen shot!
Small bench, now I remember....but too late!