A600 maximum (stock) performance and PAL/NTSC

[brownb2]

It's been a few years since I've owned an Amiga and I've picked up an old A600 at the bargain price of £26 to do some retro gaming and decided to upgrade it with some old parts I had - hard disk +1MB RAM upgrade.

Now I know this machine is slow by modern Amiga standards but I remember NTSC mode sped the stock clock speed up and I'm looking for best workbench performance/quality from the machine.

To this end I'll be:

- Installing SetPatch
- Installing Mem Plus
- Running in at least 640x512
- Not using ClassicWB GAAE (it looks a bit unprofessional!)

Can anyone recommend any other software and if possible tell me why NTSC was faster (thus a "stock" overclock) since there is a program that switches on NTSC but gives full PAL height resolution?

Cheers,

Benjamin

[Zac67]

NTSC mode isn't any faster. It may appear so when software is timed by vertical blanking only. Running NTSC screens in PAL mode (with a blank bar at the bottom) may speed things up a bit since there's less bitmap DMA going on, increasing Blitter time and CPU time for DMA intense graphic modes.

(Yes, a real NTSC machine really is a tiny bit faster (7.16 vs 7.09 MHz CPU clock), but this isn't noticable and can't be changed by switching to NTSC video timing.)

As to "switches on NTSC but gives full PAL height resolution" I don't understand what you mean. The difference in NTSC and PAL (amiga-wise) is the number of horizontal lines thus screen height.

[Britelite]

Can anyone recommend any other software and if possible tell me why NTSC was faster (thus a "stock" overclock) since there is a program that switches on NTSC but gives full PAL height resolution?

If it really gives full PAL resolution then it's most certainly not switching to NTSC-mode

[tone007]

If it really gives full PAL resolution then it's most certainly not switching to NTSC-mode

Overscan can give you PAL resolution in NTSC mode, can't it? (Not that this seems terribly helpful to the OP.)

[Britelite]

Overscan can give you PAL resolution in NTSC mode, can't it? (Not that this seems terribly helpful to the OP.)

Nope, you can't get 256 lines on NTSC (and even if you could, you'd still not really get PAL resolution, as it's still larger with it's overscan area).

[Cammy]

Maximum overscan from NTSC is 480 lines, so you could make it 640x480 if you like standard size resolutions.

Since all my games and software runs in PAL though, I find it best to just keep my A600 in 4-colour 640x256 PAL High Res. It's nice and fast, and thanks to the iconset and fonts I use it all fits on screen well enough. Here's a screenshot from my A600:

[brownb2]

If it really gives full PAL resolution then it's most certainly not switching to NTSC-mode

Actually the utility was on an old AUI coverdisk (it doesn't appear to be on Aminet, or at least easily found).

The readme mentioned that they wanted to use an NTSC screen mode but still have full PAL height. I suspect it was an overscan setting but I'll try and dig the disk out again tonight.

Anyhow, the second part of the question is recommended software - I remember a Smart(Cache?) utility for (pre)caching disk cylinders that was better than add buffers... although I probably won't have enough RAM for that although mapping it to the hard drive somehow would be useful...

[brownb2]

The software I mentioned -

AUI Superdisk 79:

NoNTSC - Grab back the lines lost from your non-PAL software.

[Britelite]

NoNTSC - Grab back the lines lost from your non-PAL software.

Yeah, that program only opens an NTSC-program on an PAL-screen, so you're still using a PAL-screenmode.

[JC]

I remember using something called euro36 for my screenmode that looked and worked great.

[brownb2]

Maximum overscan from NTSC is 480 lines, so you could make it 640x480 if you like standard size resolutions.

Since all my games and software runs in PAL though, I find it best to just keep my A600 in 4-colour 640x256 PAL High Res. It's nice and fast, and thanks to the iconset and fonts I use it all fits on screen well enough.

Okay here's the low down.. I achieved 1.66MB (1666656 bytes) free RAM (from 2MB Chip only) with a fully usable 8 colour MagicWB desktop with most of the frills:

To do this I've:

• Installed SetPatch
• Installed CopyMemQuicker
• Installed KillClick2
• Installed ReqTools
• Installed MagicWB
• Installed TBClock
• Installed NickPrefs to allow Marble MagicWB background image in WB 2.
• Installed Ordering
• Installed lha, lzx, unzip and configured it with Ordering
• Installed WHDLoad
• Installed the latest Amiga installer bin
• Got my desktop at 8 colour NTSC High Res Laced with an overscan of 700x464.
• Have just DH0, Ordering and CF0: dosdriver left icons out on the desktop.
• Have no Workbench window (standard these days - backdrop ticked only).
• Moved the Ram Disk to DH0: (saves about 60K)
• Removed un-needed assigns (e.g. printers, and drivers/handlers)
• Moved CF0: to Storage and left out the icon on the desktop (rather than having it load on ever boot when I'd need the RAM for WHDLoad). This saves about 150K.
• Removed all buffers from drives (-20 DF0: i.e. 5+15, -5 CC0:, -20 CF0: )
• Large whdload games have preload disabled.

I couldn't get Add36K working and as an additional note the clipboard functionality can also probably be disabled.

If anybody else can help me better this I'd like to see 1.7 MB free ;)

[Zac67]

• Got my desktop at 8 colour NTSC High Res Laced with an overscan of 698x558 (bizarrely it uses slightly less memory than PAL but more of my monitor when overscan'd!).

M8, hate to tell ya - NTSC has exactly 525 scan lines, so there's absolutely no way to overscan beyond that...

[Kronos]

With ECS-Agnus that res is possible (just like Euro36) as you can programm the horizontal and vertical timings quite freely,your still bound to on the 2 or 3 pixelclock (LowRes,HighRes,SuperHighRes) so the result won't be NTSC or PAL conform, but might still be close enough for an 1084 to display.

[brownb2]

M8, hate to tell ya - NTSC has exactly 525 scan lines, so there's absolutely no way to overscan beyond that...

Whoops thanks - I'll change my last post. I'd given the PAL overscan settings.

[Tenacious]

Okay here's the low down.. I achieved 1.66MB (1666656 bytes) free RAM (from 2MB Chip only) with a fully usable 8 colour MagicWB desktop with most of the frills:

To do this I've:
...

• Installed Ordering
• Installed lha, lzx, unzip and configured it with Ordering

...

If anybody else can help me better this I'd like to see 1.7 MB free ;)

It's fun to see that some one else has discovered and appreciates the efficiency of Ordering.

I must have missed something, what's magical about 1.7 MB free?  You seem to be sacrificing much to get there.  Is adding a fast ram expansion out of the question?

Fast Ram would modestly improve system performance, turn the Ramdisk into a far more useful tool, allow better disk buffering to improve access, etc.

You asked for software suggestions.  You might consider an improved hard disk file system, like PFS3 (Hopefully, available in PD soon, it's much faster and more secure than FFS).  There are faster serial port drivers, math libraries, and datatypes on Aminet.

Are you trying to see how far you can push the system, are you primarily a gamer?  What do want this system to do?