GFX cards

[melott]

I have a question-----------
 I hope I didn't make a mistake.
 I bought a GFX card (Firecracker 24) in hopes of improving the speed and general display on my
A3k. I haven't plugged it in yet. I started wondering,
is this card going to give me better GFX than the
stock (2 mg. Agnes) chip?? I don't do any vidio
editing or anything like that, just games and
net serfing.

Mel Ott

[Rob]

I don't think buying a GFX card is a mistake.  Websites should look
nicer in 16 or 24 bit for a start.

[shIva]

Rob wrote:
I don't think buying a GFX card is a mistake.  Websites should look
nicer in 16 or 24 bit for a start.

.... and the speedup is incredible (seen against the standard agnus chip gfx) ;-)

[Ilwrath]

@mel ott-

I bought a GFX card (Firecracker 24) in hopes of improving the speed and general display on my A3k.  I haven't plugged it in yet. I started wondering,
is this card going to give me better GFX than the
stock (2 mg. Agnes) chip?? I don't do any vidio
editing or anything like that, just games and
net serfing.

Well, a 24 bit video card is a big improvement over the stock Amiga's video.  The problem is, the Firecracker 24 is a video editing card.  As far as I can tell, it's not supported under CyberGraphX or Picasso96.

What that means, is the only time it'll be in use is when you're editing video or displaying 24-bit images.  The 24 bit screenmodes generated by the card won't be available to Workbench, other applications, or games.  (only cards that are supported by CyberGraphX or Picasso96 can play games).  As far as I know, the only two cards that can use a 24 bit workbench that AREN'T supported in CGX/Picasso are the RetinaZ2 and OpalVision24, and I don't believe either of those works well for workbench apps, such as web browsers, etc...  They're specialty video cards.  (I've run into this problem, as I'm a Retina Z2 owner in an older machine.  It's been on the "Plan to support in future release" list for many years, now...)

With the Firecracker, for Workbench (surfing, chatting, whatever) you'll still be using your standard Amiga ECS graphics, instead of the card.  Games will also only be able to use the Amiga's graphics, as they won't know how to initialize anything to the video card.

....At least that's how I understand it.  Unfortunatly.

[Quixote]

Ilwrath informed:

@mel ott-

...As far as I know, the only two cards that can use a 24 bit workbench that AREN'T supported in CGX/Picasso are the RetinaZ2 and OpalVision24, and I don't believe either of those works well for workbench apps, such as web browsers, etc...  They're specialty video cards.

:-o If there is a way to run Workbench on the OpalVision card, I'd like to hear about it...

:-( To my knowledge, the Opalvision card doesn't support retargetable graphics, so only a few software titles will work with it.  This includes the software that comes with it, a few miscellaneous bits from Aminet, and a couple of other things such as Imagine, and such.  Mind you, Imagine only uses the Opalvision card (or the Firecracker, if you prefer) to display the finished image.  The editors run on the Amiga's native graphics chipset.

[melott]

so what you are saying is ( if I understand you correctly) that the problem with these cards is not
a hardware problem but a software problem.
I would think that the manufactures of these cards
would send a driver with them to allow them to be used with workbench and whatever.
 If the  Picasso or Cyber card have become the
defacto standard then the drivers should spoof
or emulate them.
 Or am I wrong in this thinking??

Mel Ott

[Ilwrath]

@Quixote-
Hmm...  If you have an OpalVision, you'd probably know better than me.  I just could have sworn that back in the day I saw a demo of a 24 bit OpalBench, which was a similiar setup to the RetinaEmu Workbench.  (More a 24 bit savvy workbench replacement than an actual RTG system)  Heck, maybe it WAS a Retina I saw back then.  It was a long time ago, and back when anything of that quality was WELL outside my price range in anything other than dreams.

@MelOtt-

I would think that the manufactures of these cards
would send a driver with them to allow them to be used with workbench and whatever.
If the Picasso or Cyber card have become the
defacto standard then the drivers should spoof
or emulate them.
 

Ahh... That's the problem.  The manufacturers of these cards typically went out of business before the idea of Retargetable Graphics (RTG) came into being.  As such, they couldn't write drivers for software packages (Picasso/CyberGraphX) that were released after their demise.  Some of these early cards also used some very nasty hardware trickery to create the 24 bit image, and may or may not be suitable to even be used in anything beyond what you can use HAM modes for on the native Amiga.  The teams for Picasso and CyberGraphX have tried to backport drivers for as many old cards as they can, but some remain on the fringe or unsupported.  Unfortunatly, from all the documentation I can find, the FireCracker remains one of those cards.  :-(

Actually it is a hardware problem.  If you go over to http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ it tells you that the Firecracker only outputs at 15.7 khz with a max resolution of 1024x484 at 24 Hz.  The card was developed long before any workbench emulation was available and I'm afraid that you wasted your money (hope it wasn't too much).  Even if there was a driver available to display workbench, apps, and games it wouldn't be much use because of the low frequency attainable.

[melott]

By  15.7 khz I assume you mean output to the
monitor. If thats the case, I use a NEC Multisync 2V
 monitor, so how does that effect my situation??
 Mel Ott