Avoid the Amiga 4000
Marc N Barrett
remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key technologies, either.
The A3000 offered substantial improvements in areas such as display resolution,
HD access, HD speed, and CPU speed. It offered no improvements in the key
areas of sound and color graphics capabilities. But it was in no way worse
than Amigas that came before it in any areas.
The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the fact
that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
all resolution modes (except for the Super HiRes modes, which are limited in
color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
display. Resolution modes that were non-interlaced before are improved
substantially by removing the scan-lines. And interlaced modes are now totally
flicker-free. Because of the Display Enhancer, the A3000 is usable with lots
of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
the user never has to worry about whether or not his or her monitor can sync
down to 15Khz because it never has to.
The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
video chip. I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the
Display Enhancer internally to the Lisa chip. I realise now that I was wrong.
The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
form in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the
A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with
very tight color restrictions. I have also found that the "Promoter" is not
hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0. With 3.0, the OS
can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open DblNTSC
and DblPAL screens instead. This has lots and lots of problems, though, which
I will get to in a bit.
The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
screens. And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about it
until the software is updated to support the A4000. Additionally, all games
will have scan-lines on an A4000.
It gets worse, though. With the A4000, it is no longer possible to use
high-quality monitors that can only sync to frequencies of 31Khz and up. To
be usable on an A4000, the monitor **MUST** be able to sync as low as 15Khz.
This is because of the very reasons I stated above. If a user were to try to
use a VGA or multisync monitor that cannot handle the 15Khz frequencies, the
display would by reduced to garbage every time a program or game opened a
15Khz NTSC or PAL screen. Don't worry, it gets even worse than this. It
turns out that the DblPAL and DblNTSC modes are output at 29Khz, not 31Khz.
This means that if a monitor were used that cannot sync to frequencies lower
than 31Khz, the only modes usable would be the few and unsupported VGA modes
(including the Productivity mode).
What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz? If this person were
to "upgrade" from an A3000 to an A4000, he or she would have to borrow a
monitor that can handle the 15Khz frequencies just to boot the machine. This
is because the A4000 probably defaults to a 15Khz 640x200 NTSC mode as it is
configured out of the box. The user would have to borrow a low-frequency
monitor just to adjust the preferences to yield a Productivity screen, so
that the system would be at all usable. And even then the system would be
only marginally usable, as every other program and all games produced a
garbaged display on the monitor.
In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
that will work with the A4000.
The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just how
much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced display
resolution. The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect. So
I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000 not
purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just the
area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend does
not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
Amiga 4000: JUST SAY NO!!!!
Udo K Schuermann
More devastating than shit on your eyeballs.
More predictable than a rat under a steam roller.
It's Marc Barrett's opinions ... again ... (yawn!)
Here's how to get your news software to automatically throw his junk messages
away so they will never again contaminate your day (try it right now!):
Press ^K (control-K) to edit your KILL file. At the end of the file, add a
line such as the following:
/marc*barrett/h:j
What this does:
The text between the //'s is "marc*barrett"; the asterisk (*) in
the name takes care of his middle name, too, just in case. Following the
search pattern is "h:j" which causes the entire message header (h) to be
searched, and the command j (junk) to be applied to all matching messages.
._. Udo Schuermann "DARE to put Marc Barrett in your KILL file!"
( ) wal...@wam.umd.edu "A4000: Yes. Marc Barrett: NONONONONONONO!"
Seeking virtual memory This post contains no smileys. Not one!!!
Seidel Daniel F
comments on the A4000 are noted ... thanks. Now please take your precious
little comments to c.s.a.a! I realize that everyone on the net has told you
this. Mabye just mabye, by the grace of God, this time you will listen.
Oleg Rovner
[~50 lines of drivel]
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
[~10 more lines of drivel went here]
Mark Barret, the New Math guy...
--
Libertarian in '92, nothing else makes sense.* oro...@ucsd.edu
Just say NO to Bush/Quyale and Clinton/Gore! * ol...@crumpet.cts.com
Jon Davis
If the Amiga 1000 and 3000 are marginal at best, and the 2000 and 4000
are "pieces of shit", why the hell are you using one? Just shut up and
go home already, geez.
--Jon Davis
Jeff Hanna
>In article <1992Oct7.1...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>[~50 lines of drivel]
>> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^
>[~10 more lines of drivel went here]
>
>Mark Barret, the New Math guy...
Well, I have an imaginary numbered Amiga, a 500+0i. Is that a good or bad
machine in Marc's eyes?
Jeff
Hsu I-wei
Yes, the A3000 is a cool machine. :)
>
> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
Did you forget the improvement in graphics speed?? In graphics modes
existing on former Amigas, you're talking about 3-4x speedup. This is not
insignificant in the least. The fact that a 16-color hires-interlaced
WB on an A4000 runs at comparable (or faster!) speed to a 2 color one on an
A3000 is very appealing to me. :) And talking price, some may consider the
A4000's street price ($2800-3000 at the moment) expensive, but the fact is
that it is close to, if not, the cheapest 68040 machine on the market. I
consider the graphics speed to be a substantial improvement, and the price
to be quite reasonble.
As for the rest of your article...
>have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
>resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the fact
>that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
>
> The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
If I had to pick between the display enhancer and Zorro III (or built-in
SCSI), guess which one I would take? :)
>[about the hardware deinterlacer in the A3000 and the benefits]
>[the OS is responsible for equvilant deinterlaced modes in the A4000, which
> lacks the hardware deinterlacer in the A3000]
>and DblPAL screens instead. This has lots and lots of problems, though, which
>I will get to in a bit.
>[alot of current software which bypass the OS or do not follow the guidelines
>set by C= will have potential problems with the A4000, the least of which
>is putting up with interlace flicker]
>[alot of repetition, which is covered by the following paragraph]
>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
>of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
>as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
>
> What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
>already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz? If this person were
>to "upgrade" from an A3000 to an A4000, he or she would have to borrow a
>monitor that can handle the 15Khz frequencies just to boot the machine. This
>is because the A4000 probably defaults to a 15Khz 640x200 NTSC mode as it is
^^^^^^^^
>configured out of the box. The user would have to borrow a low-frequency
As you are not sure about this, I will take your statement to mean:
If this person were to "upgrade" from an A3000 to an A4000, he or she _might_
end up having to borrow a monitor that can handle 15kHz just to boot the
machine.
I hope that someone will confirm/deny the above speculation.
>monitor just to adjust the preferences to yield a Productivity screen, so
>that the system would be at all usable. And even then the system would be
>only marginally usable, as every other program and all games produced a
>garbaged display on the monitor.
>
> In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
>have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
>thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
>and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
Why don't you do people who still want the A4000 a favor and help them out by
telling which monitors do.
>were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
>ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
>that will work with the A4000.
Just about, but not quite. :) I agree that there will be some _major_
problems with old and even currently avaiable software from running properly
on an A4000 + monitor which can't sync down to 15kHz. However, it is quite
clear that C= does not want future applications to bypass the OS. Their
decision not to public hardware specs on the graphics chipset is an indicator
of their determination to impose strong guidelines/standards on future
software.
>[rest of article worthy only of .advocacy deleted]
If you absolutely must have a > 14" monitor, and can't afford to upgrade/buy
new software then I agree that you should wait at least for a hardware
deinterlacer of some sort to come out. If your current software investment
isn't heavy, then take a good look at the A4000. :)
To those who are going to purchase an A4000 and a 14" size monitor, I can
already offer an alternative to the C= 1950 or 1960 monitors. I bought an
NEC 3DS for my A3000 over a year ago. It works with all screenmodes (ie. syncs
down to 15kHz). I haven't had any problems with the 3DS, and I'm sure you can
get one for less than either of the Commodore monitors. There have been
several posts in the past listing multisyncs which support 15kHz, so if
anyone is intersted I'm sure the list can be posted again. :)
>
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
Francis
Osma Ahvenlampi
>To those who are going to purchase an A4000 and a 14" size monitor, I can
>already offer an alternative to the C= 1950 or 1960 monitors. I bought an
>NEC 3DS for my A3000 over a year ago. It works with all screenmodes (ie. syncs
>down to 15kHz). I haven't had any problems with the 3DS, and I'm sure you can
>get one for less than either of the Commodore monitors. There have been
>several posts in the past listing multisyncs which support 15kHz, so if
>anyone is intersted I'm sure the list can be posted again. :)
From academical curiosity only: Nec 3DS supports horizontal sync down to 15kHz,
but what about refresh rates? I read about some monitor that can do 15kHz, but
only 55Hz refresh. I don't remember which it was though. PAL screen modes need
50Hz refresh. If I have understood correctly, to use all A4000 screenmodes you
would need a multiscan monitor capable of 15kHz to 31.5kHz horizontal sync and
50Hz to 72Hz refresh. Is this correct? Are there any monitors that can do this,
and how do they measure to others in terms of display clarity, contrast etc?
Also, in A3000 using deinterlaced 640x512 mode takes chip RAM bandwidth the
same amount that a 640x256 mode would. I understand that using DblPAL 640x512
would take twice this, refreshing the whole screen in 50Hz... Is this true?
>Francis
--
Osma Ahvenlampi - oahv...@niksula.cs.hut.fi
My opinions are mine, and though someone else may share them, that's not my
fault. You may freely agree or disagree with me, I don't much care.
Erik Funkenbusch
wonderful speach won't be mis-informed.
Nothing is stopping you from buying the ZorroII Display enhancer C= currently
sells. This should work fine on a 4000 as much as 2000.
Marc's comment that there isn't a display enhancer available is wrong. (as
usual)
Marc's comment that the IDE drive in the 4000 is slower is also wrong, as has
been posted here by diskspeed performance tests, it's about the same, if not
faster than the stock 3000's HD and SCSI.
The only thing lacking in HD performance is it's ability to add more devices.
While Marc does seem to be correct that you need a 15khz monitor, he says that
the C= Monitor is the only one that supports this. This is also wrong, In a
recent tour through computer shopper i found dozens of them, including names
such as Nanao, Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC and others..
.--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| UUCP: {amdahl!tcnet, crash}!orbit!pnet51!chucks | "I know he's come back |
| ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!chu...@nosc.mil | from the dead, but do |
| INET: chu...@pnet51.orb.mn.org | you really think he's |
|-------------------------------------------------| moved back in?" |
| Amiga programmer at large, employment options | Lou Diamond Philips in |
| welcome, inquire within. | "The First Power". |
`--------------------------------------------------------------------------'
ALAN C. WEN (409)693-2924
040, new chipset, nor its general design. He mainly concentrated on its
lack of a display enhancer as opposed to the A3000. I'm sorely dissappointed
as well by this. Besides, you only posted your message because "everyone on
the net has" already told Marc to leave. You haven't countered nor noted
anything about what he stated right or wrong...
Have fun joining in the ranks of those that lead w/o clue.
alan
Timothy Matthew Ciceran
(Mike Schwager) writes:
>>While Marc does seem to be correct that you need a 15khz monitor, he says that
>>the C= Monitor is the only one that supports this. This is also wrong, In a
>>recent tour through computer shopper i found dozens of them, including names
>>such as Nanao, Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC and others..
>Are the 15khz monitors much more expensive?
Generally speaking, these monitors are often cheaper. From what I understand,
CBM OEMs their 1950 and 1960 series monitors from AOC, which is an inexpensive
alternative. Higher-end Sony displays are an exception. In the end, 15KHz
support is only essential for using RGB-based video equipment (in which case
an additional 108x series monitor is more appropriate). The argument about
the quality of game displays is also quite obtuse. Personally, I find that
the promoted versions of lower resolutions are more attractive, even with
scan lines. Adjusting the screen dimensions eliminates the problem. Most
people will ultimately opt for a 640 x 400 or 640 x 480 non-interlaced
display anyway, making the scan rate issue rather moot.
ch41 ch41
- C. Hart
--
Claye K. Hart
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ch41
Internet: ch...@prism.gatech.edu
Mike Schwager
>I'm continuing to cross post this, so that anyone that's read mr. barret's
>wonderful speach won't be mis-informed.
>Nothing is stopping you from buying the ZorroII Display enhancer C= currently
>sells. This should work fine on a 4000 as much as 2000.
How much is that display enhancer, street price-wise?
>While Marc does seem to be correct that you need a 15khz monitor, he says that
>the C= Monitor is the only one that supports this. This is also wrong, In a
>recent tour through computer shopper i found dozens of them, including names
>such as Nanao, Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC and others..
Are the 15khz monitors much more expensive?
-Mike
Hsu I-wei
>
>From academical curiosity only: Nec 3DS supports horizontal sync down to 15kHz,
>but what about refresh rates? I read about some monitor that can do 15kHz, but
The 3DS does 50-90 Hz vertical. I've tried it with the non-interlaced
"Super72" and "Euro72" screenmodes, and it can handle all of them.
>only 55Hz refresh. I don't remember which it was though. PAL screen modes need
>50Hz refresh. If I have understood correctly, to use all A4000 screenmodes you
>would need a multiscan monitor capable of 15kHz to 31.5kHz horizontal sync and
>50Hz to 72Hz refresh. Is this correct? Are there any monitors that can do this,
>and how do they measure to others in terms of display clarity, contrast etc?
Yeah, I think the monitor would have to support 50-72Hz vertical along with
15-31.5 kHz horiztonal. Well, the 3DS and the C= 1950 and 1960
monitors(hopefully! ;) satisfy this. Hopefully some others do too! I don't
know how the picture of the 3DS compares with C='s monitors, although one
person claimed that the 1950 offered a better display in his opinion. I
am somewhat doubtful about this, he's seen both and I haven't... still, in
terms of overall flexibility (being able to work with different computer
platforms and display modes CGA, EGA, Mac II, etc..) _and_ reliability I
don't think you can beat the 3DS. About the only thing it falls short is
that at higher resolutions (800x600 and up) I think the 3DS can only do
interlaced.
>--
>Osma Ahvenlampi - oahv...@niksula.cs.hut.fi
>My opinions are mine, and though someone else may share them, that's not my
>fault. You may freely agree or disagree with me, I don't much care.
Francis
Chris Green
>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga.
Mark:
Please confine your posts of this nature to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, where
they are more appropriate.
Thanks,
Virtually all of the Net.
--
*-------------------------------------------*---------------------------*
|Chris Green - Graphics Software Engineer - chr...@commodore.COM f
| Commodore-Amiga - uunet!cbmvax!chrisg n
|My opinions are my own, and do not - icantforgettheimpression o
|necessarily represent those of my employer.- youmadeyouleftaholeinthe r
|"A screaming comes across the sky..." - backofmyhead d
*-------------------------------------------*---------------------------*
Carl Mueller
> [ much type MB-type blathering deleted ]
>
> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>improvement is color.
I don't suppose the 68040 is worth anything, eh?
>... In the key area of display
>resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the fact
>that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
Omigosh! Better head for the hills, Martha!
>The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games.
According to MB, there are hardly any properly written programs available
for the Amiga! And certainly no correct games!!!!
Seriously, if the software developers have any sense at all, they will
begin to correct such improper oversights. Commodore is NOT at fault
here. Amiga software developers need to mature and understand what it
means to follow software guidelines. In the Macintosh world, software
developers HAD to because so darn many models of the Macintosh came out,
they could no longer count on certain hardware. The same is beginning
to happen with the Amiga. People have to learn sometime.
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
Please keep your "Oh no, the sky is falling!" in advocacy, where I can
not be disturbed by them. Perhaps consider growing up a little, too.
Not everyone buys an Amiga just to play games!
-Carl (mue...@cs.unc.edu)
Hsu I-wei
>In article <1992Oct7.2...@usl.edu>, dfs...@usl.edu (Seidel Daniel F) writes...
>> Normally I never reply to you ; however, this is the exception. Your
>>comments on the A4000 are noted ... thanks. Now please take your precious
>>little comments to c.s.a.a! I realize that everyone on the net has told you
>>this. Mabye just mabye, by the grace of God, this time you will listen.
>>
>What Marc said about the A4000 was mostly true. He didn't knock it on it's
>040, new chipset, nor its general design. He mainly concentrated on its
No, he did knock on the new chipset by saying the _only_ substantial
improvement is color. Graphics speedup of 3-4x is not what I'd call
insubstantial! And he also passed on speculation (ie. saying that you
probably have to borrow a monitor which syncs down to 15kHz just to boot the
A4000) as if it was fact. The lack of a display enhancer is an important
point against the A4000, but Marc clouded his article with his usual
propaganda worthy only of .advocacy.
>lack of a display enhancer as opposed to the A3000. I'm sorely dissappointed
>as well by this. Besides, you only posted your message because "everyone on
>the net has" already told Marc to leave. You haven't countered nor noted
>anything about what he stated right or wrong...
I don't see the point in telling Marc to "leave" either. But it is important
to counter the misinformation he spreads.
>
>Have fun joining in the ranks of those that lead w/o clue.
Hey, ignorance is bliss. :)
>
>alan
>
Francis
Hsu I-wei
>Please post this list of compatible monitors...
To be more precise, would someone please post/repost what multisyncs will
sync down to 15kHz horizontal, and if they should work with all known
screenmodes? Oh, and if you have the specs handy, they'd be nice too. :)
For starters:
Monitor size horizontal freq. vertical freq. max resolution
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEC 3D/3DS 14" 15.5 - 38 kHz 50 - 90 Hz 1024x768 (int.)
>
>- C. Hart
>--
>Claye K. Hart
>Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
>uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ch41
>Internet: ch...@prism.gatech.edu
Francis
P.S. I think I asked about this before, but I didn't save the list of 5 or
so other monitors which someone was kind enough to post.
Daniel S. Riley
bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) rants:
>The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
>of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
>as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
>screens.
I have not played with an A4000, so I may be wrong, but I believe Marc
is *way* overstating things here (big surprise...). If you enable
promotion, 3.0 should promote anything that does not *explicitly* call
out for an NTSC or PAL screen. That means the vast majority of
well-written Amiga programs should be opening promotable screens, not
a "tiny few, well-written Amiga programs". I believe DPaint IV calls
out for NTSC explicitly, so it is not promoted (but I expect that to
be fixed in the next release)--and I don't know of any others.
So, Marc, have you verified your claims, one way or another? That is,
have you run PageStream, SimAnt and SimEarth on an A4000, and verified
that the screens are not promoted? Or disassembled the code and
verified that they call out explicitly for an NTSC screen?
--
-Dan Riley Internet: d...@lns598.tn.cornell.edu
-Wilson Lab, Cornell University HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr)
Lode Vande Sande
(cpw...@rigel.tamu.edu) writes :
>> Normally I never reply to you ; however, this is the exception. Your
>>comments on the A4000 are noted ... thanks. Now please take your precious
>>little comments to c.s.a.a! I realize that everyone on the net has told you
>>this. Mabye just mabye, by the grace of God, this time you will listen.
>>
>What Marc said about the A4000 was mostly true. He didn't knock it on it's
>040, new chipset, nor its general design. He mainly concentrated on its
>lack of a display enhancer as opposed to the A3000. I'm sorely dissappointed
>as well by this.
What the hell are you crying about ? The A4000 has exactly the same
capabilities as the A3000 in the domain of flicker-fixing, no the A4000
does better than the A3000 !!! The A3000 has a flicker-fixer with a
switch, so you could turn it off for the modes it couldn't handle !
Well, you don't need to turn anything of on the A4000 ! All modes that
the A3000 could deinterlace, can also be created on the A4000 without
interlace AND with upto 8 bitplanes !!! If the OS doesn't support
the promotion well, it won't be hard to patch some routines so that all
screens/views that can be display without interlace will be !
I myself also exspected some better graphics than what the A4000 got, but
don't go around saying its gfx are worse than those of the A3000, 'cause
that simply isn't true ! However I would like to have seen some increase
in resolution without having to look at that interlace stuff ! 1024 x 768
in 256 colors would be just fine ! I guess I'll have to wait for the
AGAGA (or something like that) chipset !
> Besides, you only posted your message because "everyone on
>the net has" already told Marc to leave. You haven't countered nor noted
>anything about what he stated right or wrong...
>
>Have fun joining in the ranks of those that lead w/o clue.
>
>alan
Now, I had an idea ... The A3000/A4000 has some PC slots and can carry a
(cheap by now) 8086(8) card and in one of those PC slots a SuperVGA card.
Now, we could use the SuperVGA from the Amiga side by using the 8086 as
a graphics processor (which doesn't need to do anything else !)
Now, I don't know if this will have the needed speed or if it would be
simpler and faster just to make a Zorro-II(I) convertor for a SuperVGA
card (like the DOMINO board uses), but you also have to keep in mind
that with this setup, you also get a PC-Emulator ... Let me know what
you guys think about it ...
+----------------+-------------------+------------------------------------+
|/////\\_____\\\\| | |
|//// /_____ \\\\| Kurt Haenen | Tjee, with this new cruncher, |
|/// /\____//\\\\| Homsemstraat 53 | I can put two times as many disks |
|\\\/\ \ / / \\| 3891 Borlo | in one box than I used to ... |
|\\\/\\ \ / /\/\\|___________________|____________________________________|
|\\\/\\\/_\/\/ //| | |
| Kurt \/_\ / ///| EMAIL : STUD11 @ CC4.KULEUVEN.AC.BE | 2B || !2B T^ = |
| Haenen \\\/// | | THE QUESTION ! |
+----------------+---------------------------------------+----------------+
Simon Cope
> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
You flame anything that comes out.
> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
Do not forget it is 4x as fast...
>have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
>resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the fact
>that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
Pardon Me?
> The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
With respect to the C= engineers who designed the display enhancer, at its
best it is a hack, at worst a nuisance.
>all resolution modes (except for the Super HiRes modes, which are limited in
>color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
>display.
Or the Euro72 and Super72 modes.
>Resolution modes that were non-interlaced before are improved
>substantially by removing the scan-lines. And interlaced modes are now totally
>flicker-free. Because of the Display Enhancer, the A3000 is usable with lots
>of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
>19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
>picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
>and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
>the user never has to worry about whether or not his or her monitor can sync
>down to 15Khz because it never has to.
Anything over 16" is really a waste of space on a machine limited to 768x580
res graphics. And you should buy a monitor to suit the machine, not the ego
of the owner. A good monitor for the Amiga is one that syncs from 15-32 Khz,
not "down to 31 Khz".
> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
>about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
>video chip.
Not very surprising, you're a very confused and deluded person.
>I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the
>Display Enhancer internally to the Lisa chip. I realise now that I was wrong.
Very.
>The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
>form in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the
>A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with
>very tight color restrictions.
Yes. Its basically called Productivity Mode.
>I have also found that the "Promoter" is not
>hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0. With 3.0, the OS
>can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open DblNTSC
>and DblPAL screens instead.
Gee, you got something right.
>The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
Its actually one of the best things about it.
>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up.
You we're stupid to buy one in the first place.
>If an Amiga problem insists on
>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
>of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
>as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
>screens. And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about it
>until the software is updated to support the A4000. Additionally, all games
>will have scan-lines on an A4000.
Promotion will work on any intuition program that has been written to C=
guidelines. The things it doesn't work on are badly written programs that
tried to cheat on the rules, and will now suffer. Not scandoubling games is
probably a good thing. Its pretty hard to shoot something that is ghosting
all over the screen because it is moving more than 15 times per second...which
is what happens on the A3000 with a deinterlacer due to the way they work. If
you don't believe me then more the mouse pointer round fast, then compare it
to the A4000 one.
> What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
>already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz?
It means they should have read the manuals.
> In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
>have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
>thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
>and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
>were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
>ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
>that will work with the A4000.
That's called marketing strategy, something you obviously haven't heard of. And
As for not many being made, I'm sure there are many Nec 3D owners who would
disagree.
>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just the
>area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
>the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
The cost of an 040 card more than outways the difference between the A3000 and
A4000. And seeing you're in love with games, DIG wont do you much good. I
also seem to recall you were one of the whingers who told C= to cut the costs
of their machines, and advocated an IDE HDisk. Talk about two faced...
Soft promotion if far superior to the old deinterlacer. C= have saved you
having to reach around behind your machine to switch of the deinterlacer every
time you play a fast game or use a 24khz graphics mode.
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
> Amiga 4000: JUST SAY NO!!!!
Gimme one NOW!!!!
Chris Hurley
[endless tirade deleted[
>
> ---
> | Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
> --------------------------------------------------
All I can do is laugh. As usual, Marc. N. Barrett, making decisions for
the world. Trying to think for others. You should concentrate on
thinking for yourself.
DXB...@psuvm.psu.edu
Point of clarification: the commodore flicker fixer goes into a scan-double
mode for non-interlaced displays (games); there is no ghosting or other
artifacts introduced. I believe it also removes itself automatically for
non-15Khz displays.
Erik Funkenbusch
>So, Marc, have you verified your claims, one way or another? That is,
>have you run PageStream, SimAnt and SimEarth on an A4000, and verified
>that the screens are not promoted? Or disassembled the code and
>verified that they call out explicitly for an NTSC screen?
I played with a 4000 today at one of my local dealers. It seemed to promote
quite well. No problems with programs like MorphPlus (GREAT program by the
way!), ADPro, PageStream, Final Copy II, etc..
Winfried Krueger
Harald Tempelman
>In article <70...@hydra.gatech.EDU> ch...@prism.gatech.EDU (ch41 ch41 ) writes:
>>Please post this list of compatible monitors...
>To be more precise, would someone please post/repost what multisyncs will
>sync down to 15kHz horizontal, and if they should work with all known
>screenmodes? Oh, and if you have the specs handy, they'd be nice too. :)
>For starters:
>Monitor size horizontal freq. vertical freq. max resolution
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>NEC 3D/3DS 14" 15.5 - 38 kHz 50 - 90 Hz 1024x768 (int.)
According to me, the NEC 3D monitor has been replaced by the NEC 3FG monitor.
This monitor does not have the horizontal frequency of the 3D monitor
anymore (31-38 kHz ????).
Harald
--
Harald Tempelman <temp...@prl.philips.nl>
Keith Baccki
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
>be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
>have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend does
>not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
>
Let's not forget the 500 in that first list!!!! Yes, I still
use mine with 1 meg and 3 floppies! (I don't know whether to type a
:) or a :( )
Marc N Barrett
>No, he did knock on the new chipset by saying the _only_ substantial
>improvement is color. Graphics speedup of 3-4x is not what I'd call
>insubstantial! And he also passed on speculation (ie. saying that you
>probably have to borrow a monitor which syncs down to 15kHz just to boot the
>A4000) as if it was fact. The lack of a display enhancer is an important
>point against the A4000, but Marc clouded his article with his usual
>propaganda worthy only of .advocacy.
We can end this quickly, just by finding out once and for all what the
default video mode of the A4000 is, as it comes out-of-the-box. If it is
the 640x200 15Khz NTSC mode, and if a user has upgraded to an A4000 from an
A3000 and only has a monitor that can handle frequencies fron 31Khz on up,
then the user WILL have to borrow a monitor to boot the computer the first
time.
>Francis
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
A4000: JUST SAY NO!!!
Marc N Barrett
>What the hell are you crying about ? The A4000 has exactly the same
>capabilities as the A3000 in the domain of flicker-fixing, no the A4000
>does better than the A3000 !!! The A3000 has a flicker-fixer with a
>switch, so you could turn it off for the modes it couldn't handle !
>Well, you don't need to turn anything of on the A4000 ! All modes that
>the A3000 could deinterlace, can also be created on the A4000 without
>interlace AND with upto 8 bitplanes !!! If the OS doesn't support
>the promotion well, it won't be hard to patch some routines so that all
>screens/views that can be display without interlace will be !
You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as hardware.
With the A3000, all screens can be promoted to 31Khz through hardware, which
cannot be bypassed by any software program. With the A4000, if a program
explicitly opens an interlaced NTSC or PAL screen, the screen will flicker
and there will be nothing you can do about it. On the A4000 there are also
no facilities available to promote non-interlaced 640x200 or 320x200
screens to 31Khz to remove the scan-lines.
The real test is to hook a monitor to an A4000 than can only handle
frequencies from 27Khz and higher. If, during normal usage of the computer
(the usage of Super HiRes or Super72 modes not counted) the display ever
reverts to garbage for whatever reason -- whether from using programs like
DPaint or from using games -- then the A4000 is inferior to an A3000 in terms
of non-interlaced display resolution. I know for a fact that it is possible
to use such a monitor with an A3000 without the display EVER being reduced to
garbage.
>+----------------+-------------------+------------------------------------+
>|/////\\_____\\\\| | |
>|//// /_____ \\\\| Kurt Haenen | Tjee, with this new cruncher, |
>|/// /\____//\\\\| Homsemstraat 53 | I can put two times as many disks |
>|\\\/\ \ / / \\| 3891 Borlo | in one box than I used to ... |
>|\\\/\\ \ / /\/\\|___________________|____________________________________|
>|\\\/\\\/_\/\/ //| | |
>| Kurt \/_\ / ///| EMAIL : STUD11 @ CC4.KULEUVEN.AC.BE | 2B || !2B T^ = |
>| Haenen \\\/// | | THE QUESTION ! |
>+----------------+---------------------------------------+----------------+
---
Marc N Barrett
>bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>
>> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
>>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
>
>You flame anything that comes out.
Only stuff that comes out that is not up to par.
>> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>>improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
>
>Do not forget it is 4x as fast...
To improve the usability of the increased color. But according to some
people, it still is not quite fast enough. Some have said that the 640x400
non-interlaced 256-color mode is slower than the 16-color mode on the A3000.
This would make it unusable, IMO.
>>have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
>>resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the fact
>>that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
>
>Pardon Me?
You don't deserve to be pardoned.
>> The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
>
>With respect to the C= engineers who designed the display enhancer, at its
>best it is a hack, at worst a nuisance.
When is it ever a nuisance?
>>all resolution modes (except for the Super HiRes modes, which are limited in
>>color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
>>display.
>
>Or the Euro72 and Super72 modes.
the Euro72 modes work fine with the display enhancer on the A3000 I use.
You have no clue about what you are talking about.
>>Resolution modes that were non-interlaced before are improved
>>substantially by removing the scan-lines. And interlaced modes are now totally
>>flicker-free. Because of the Display Enhancer, the A3000 is usable with lots
>>of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
>>19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
>>picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
>>and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
>>the user never has to worry about whether or not his or her monitor can sync
>>down to 15Khz because it never has to.
>
>Anything over 16" is really a waste of space on a machine limited to 768x580
>res graphics. And you should buy a monitor to suit the machine, not the ego
>of the owner. A good monitor for the Amiga is one that syncs from 15-32 Khz,
>not "down to 31 Khz".
Why? If a person is not interested in video, wants all displays to be
non-interlaced and scan-line-free, then the only monitor to use is one that
will handle high frequencies.
>> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
>>about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
>>video chip.
>
>Not very surprising, you're a very confused and deluded person.
You seem to be much more confused.
>>I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the
>>Display Enhancer internally to the Lisa chip. I realise now that I was wrong.
>
>Very.
Yes. I was wrong to expect progress.
>>The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
>>form in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the
>>A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with
>>very tight color restrictions.
>
>Yes. Its basically called Productivity Mode.
Not quite. The DblNTSC mode and Productivity modes are similar but not the
same. Productivity is output at 31Khz, DblNTSC is output at 29Khz. The
resolutions differ as well. You have no clue about anything.
>>I have also found that the "Promoter" is not
>>hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0. With 3.0, the OS
>>can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open DblNTSC
>>and DblPAL screens instead.
>
>Gee, you got something right.
I'm surprised you admitted it.
>>The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
>
>Its actually one of the best things about it.
Not if you want to use a monitor than can only handle the higher
frequencies, and there are many reasons to use such a monitor.
>>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up.
>
>You we're stupid to buy one in the first place.
Tell that to the many people who have bought such monitors for the A3000.
When the A3000 came out, Commodore said that VGA monitors could be used with
it with no problems, and even introduced the 1930 VGA monitor for use with
the A3000. Commodore gave no indications that future Amigas would not be
able to use VGA monitors.
>>If an Amiga problem insists on
>>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>>at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
>>of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
>>as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
>>screens. And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about it
>>until the software is updated to support the A4000. Additionally, all games
>>will have scan-lines on an A4000.
>
>Promotion will work on any intuition program that has been written to C=
>guidelines. The things it doesn't work on are badly written programs that
>tried to cheat on the rules, and will now suffer. Not scandoubling games is
>probably a good thing. Its pretty hard to shoot something that is ghosting
>all over the screen because it is moving more than 15 times per second...which
>is what happens on the A3000 with a deinterlacer due to the way they work. If
>you don't believe me then more the mouse pointer round fast, then compare it
>to the A4000 one.
I have played games on the A3000 with the display enhancer turned on, and
it has NEVER been a problem. I have never really noticed the ghosting that
you speak of. Its there if objects ont he screen move REALLY raplidly, but
how often do you see this happening in most games?
>> What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
>>already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz?
>
>It means they should have read the manuals.
They read the manuals that came with the A3000, which say that the A3000
works fine with monitors than can only handle frequencies from 31Khz and
higher. And bought monitors accordingly.
BTW, I have not been able to find ANY low-radiation multisync monitors
that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz. Some people do worry about
low-freqency electromagnetic radiation from computer monitors, and the A4000
would force these people to use normal monitors that emit high amounts of
this radiation.
>> In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
>>have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
>>thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
>>and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
>>were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
>>ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
>>that will work with the A4000.
>
>That's called marketing strategy, something you obviously haven't heard of. And
>As for not many being made, I'm sure there are many Nec 3D owners who would
>disagree.
It goes along with Commodore's marketing strategy to force Amiga owners to
only be able to use Commodore's HD drives, I suppose. It's not a marketing
strategy that I agree with.
>>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>>becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just the
>>area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
>>the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
>
>The cost of an 040 card more than outways the difference between the A3000 and
>A4000. And seeing you're in love with games, DIG wont do you much good. I
>also seem to recall you were one of the whingers who told C= to cut the costs
>of their machines, and advocated an IDE HDisk. Talk about two faced...
I have never advocated IDE instead of SCSI. You have no clue.
>Soft promotion if far superior to the old deinterlacer. C= have saved you
>having to reach around behind your machine to switch of the deinterlacer every
>time you play a fast game or use a 24khz graphics mode.
I have never found the need to flip the display enhancer switch on the
A3000 I use. The 24Khz Super72 modes are interlaced, and the monitor I use
cannot handle interlacing.
Get a clue.
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
A4000: JUST SAY NO!!!
Mike Schwager
>> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
>>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga.
>Please confine your posts of this nature to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, where
>they are more appropriate.
>*-------------------------------------------*---------------------------*
>|Chris Green - Graphics Software Engineer - chr...@commodore.COM f
Chris,
With all due respect, misinformation is not appropriate anywhere. Mark
should just be quiet and get an education. He needs it.
-Mike
schw...@cs.uiuc.edu
Fish Archive Spots: (updated 9/29/92)
128.174.5.59 ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (disks 001-730 and counting.. GO, Fred, GO!)
Maintained by Mike Schwager (schw...@cs.uiuc.edu)
128.255.19.233 grind.isca.uiowa.edu has FF #1-current
Maintained by Michael T. Pins (ami...@isca.uiowa.edu)
128.171.44.7 ftp.hawaii.edu (mirror of ux1: disks 001-current)
Maintained by am...@ftp.hawaii.edu (Baron)
The disks on ux1 say: "...I want to be a Fish Disk in Hawaii!" :-)
16.1.0.2 gatekeeper.dec.com has FF #1-600 or so in /pub/micro/amiga/fish
Maintained by vi...@pa.dec.com ... does not appear to be current
128.252.135.4 wuarchive.wustl.edu has the newest in systems/amiga/fish/fish
(Woah! Now lots of disks at one of America's premier ftp sites!)
IN AUSTRALIA:
139.130.4.6 archie.au
a mirror of wuarchive.wustl.edu? Maintained by ???
IN EUROPE:
128.214.6.100 ftp.funet.fi carries all Fish disks in /pub/amiga/fish.
Maintained by Pertti Lehtinen <p...@ftp.funet.fi> and
Jarkko Hietaniemi <j...@ftp.funet.fi>
137.226.4.105 ftp.dfv.rwth-aachen.de
/pub/amiga/fish/f? Disks 600+
/pub/amiga/fish/olddisks Disks 1-600 (mounted from CDROM)
Maintained by Stefan Becker
<ste...@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
Gerardo Bentancor
> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
>its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key technologies, either.
Point Number 1: You Flamed the A3000...
> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
>have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
Point Number 2: You Flamed the A4000... (which I'm sure you have never laid
your hands on yet!)
>flicker-free. Because of the Display Enhancer, the A3000 is usable with lots
>of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
>19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
>picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
>and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
So now you have decided that A3000 wasn't too bad after all...
> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
A Little Confused! My friend you are very confused about a lot of things..
[ A lot of other crap deleted ]
> The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just how
>much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced display
>resolution. The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect. So
>I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000 not
>purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
Yes Mr World Acclaimed Authority on All Aspects Amiga (WAAAAA)
>Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just the
>area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
>the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
Incidently I find it hard to believe that you will notice much of a difference
between the IDE and the SCSI drives Mr WAAAAA, as most drives fitted to
these machines are in the 120MB capacity, and since SCSI only really
excells (sp?) with higher capacity drives it doesn't really matter...
(for eg. I have on my 2000 a GVP HardCard Series II with a 100meg quantum,
my brother on the other hand has a factory installed IDE 30meg hd on the A600,
and I can tell you now, that his little beast will load Workbench and all
that crap at just the same speed, if not a little faster than mine!, we
both use 2.0)
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
>be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
>have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend does
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Marc would know a lot about shit tho...(since he spins so much of it)
>not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
Oh, listen to this, this is good. Tell me my little furry friend what was so
good about the A1000? In so much as it was a pioneering machine, all future
revisions of the Amiga have been far better.
You are a complete bumbling idiot. I have yet to see anyone on the net
that makes such ridiculous comments ALL of the time, and I am impressed by
your feverish desire to post such tripe. Your arguements are contradictory
at times, and your self-important hand-waving makes everyone cringe. You
claim to be a supporter of the Amiga computer, and yet you indulge in
Amiga-bashing so often you resemble an Atari FALCON groupie! You post
hundreds of lines at a time, shit you must love to see you name in print,
and no matter how many times you get shot down you just bounce up again.
And to top it all off, you are such an expert on the Amiga system(s), how
much software have you ever written for the amiga? I dare you publish any
of your software in this newsgroup!
ATTN COMMODORE: Please employ Marc Barrett as the CEO. After all he is
brimming with expertise and brilliance, and he has designed many, many
computer systems in his lifetime - how can you pass it up!
---
| G. Bentancor -GB- | email: u915...@cs.uow.edu.au
-----------------------------------------------------
Marc Barrett: JUST SAY GET F*CKED!!!
Martha says: "Little pr*ck, I'll give him a piece of me!"
Eyvind Bernhardsen
kill-file!)
As always, MB comes up with more nonsense, thusly:
> You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
>done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as hardware.
Oh, pardonnez-MOI, *GOD* does not TRUST software now. Gee, if you don't trust
software, why run it? The way I see it is, any way C= get rid of the flicker is
fine, and if they cut costs on their hardware, it's no problem. Like I said
somewhere else, a patch will soon turn up to fix software that still flickers.
>and there will be nothing you can do about it. On the A4000 there are also
>no facilities available to promote non-interlaced 640x200 or 320x200
>screens to 31Khz to remove the scan-lines.
What's wrong with scanlines? A flicker-fixed display looks kinda chunky if you
ask me (not that you'd ask ANYONE'S opinion, MB). So it won't run on a >=31KHz
MultiScan (BTW, MultiSync is an NEC trademark... Not many people know that :)
monitor - if you can afford an A4000, I'm sure you'll be able to afford a new
monitor, and you'd get more offers for buying your old A3000 if you sold the
monitor with it... If you're NOT selling your A3000, you need a new monitor
anyway! (Did y'all follow that?)
>of non-interlaced display resolution. I know for a fact that it is possible
>to use such a monitor with an A3000 without the display EVER being reduced to
>garbage.
On a similar note, the display of the DECstation I'm using to write this gets
reduced to garbage every time something by MB turns up... Coincidence?
OK, OK, maybe that last paragraph should have a smiley. On the other hand, why
bother?
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
> A4000: JUST SAY NO!!!
PS: Kurt Haenen - way cool .sig!
PPS: MB, please reduce your postings to one line or less, I'm NOT impressed with
your ability to talk out of your a** using a keyboard.
Don mac phee
by an individual whose name exists in more kill files tan ever before as
a result of this thread. I'll not use that name in hopes of reaching as
many of you as possible.
To summarize: (Life according to said dweeb.)
The A500, A2000, A2500, A3000, and A4000 are sh*t.
The A500 is a redundant hack.
The A2000 is a low-powered, 16-bit backplane hack of previous hack.
The A2500 is a consession to speed built on the previous hack.
The A3000 is a hack unto itself.
The A4000 is a marketing ploy, hacked to make all previous machines
obsolete, solely to drum up more revenue.
The 1985 C= Amiga 1000 is the perfect machine.
[Ed: This should start to sound a bit satirical, but we all know who I
am paraphrasing, zo.....]
Now the real sniveling.
Said dweeb believes that software (The stuff we get off of firmware, to
run on hardware. You know... Lemmmings.) is not to be given the same
amount of trust as hardware. I would like to add the following
commentary to this malapropism:
HARDWARE is SOFTWARE for this purpose. [Save for the fact that I can
upgrade me software instead of flicking a switch back and forth to handle
all sorts of odd sh*t]
The A4000 (according to the author of this bible of computing) is
default configured to run at 15.75Hz, and if you have a VGA monitor
you're scrod.
BULL Alert! BULL Alert! Beware of large amounts of slightly aromatic
excrement in posts from this person WRT this...
a) Said Dweeb has NEVER SEEN an A4000.
b) .................... BEEN in the same area code as one either.
c) .................... SEEN anything in writing to justify this.
d) .................... HEARD anything from C= ................
e) Said Dweeb will probably never own another computer in his pitiful
existence because they don't match up to his A1000.
In reply to this I offer the following solutions:
a) ASK C=. They will probably give a straight answer, THEN post your
findings, As*hole.
b) If it turns out you guessed right, when you BUY an A4000, have it
configured at the dealer who SHOULD have at least ONE 1084 monitor.
c) Or, borrow a friends nintendo monitor.
d) Or, DON't BUY one.
Now what *I* am pleading for is the following:
a) A C= Engineer to refute this thread.
b) Said Dweeb to graduate.
c) My free A4000. :)
Ah! Finally got that hangnail.....
100 posts in response to this dweeb, 100 posts of flames.
You read one at 1200 baud, 99 more people reply to the same.
199 posts in response to this....
--
Amiga /// Donald Mac Phee \\\ agimA How many people remember that an
2000 /// Rpg...@Uriacc.Bitnet \\\ 0002 MPC was the first PC clone on the
\\\/// dmac...@Nyx.Cs.Du.Edu \\\/// market? Get an A4000 and find out
\XX/ Perso...@Ecl1.Uri.Edu \XX/ what Multimedia REALLY is. $2699!
Don Burnett
> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
>remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
>offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
>its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key technologies, either.
>HD access, HD speed, and CPU speed. It offered no improvements in the key
>areas of sound and color graphics capabilities. But it was in no way worse
>than Amigas that came before it in any areas.
>
> The A4000 is a different story. With the A4000, the only substantial
>improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
>have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
>that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
>
sticking one of these in the A4000??? Would it de-interlace all of the
old modes, and by flicking the switch you could bypass it?? The A2320
just might work. I dare someone here on the net to try it..
> The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
>all resolution modes (except for the Super HiRes modes, which are limited in
>color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
>display. Resolution modes that were non-interlaced before are improved
>substantially by removing the scan-lines. And interlaced modes are now totally
>flicker-free. Because of the Display Enhancer, the A3000 is usable with lots
>of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
>19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
>picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
>and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
>the user never has to worry about whether or not his or her monitor can sync
>down to 15Khz because it never has to.
>
Complaining because you can't run out and by a PC monitor for this
puppy is ridiculous.. The dblNTSC modes have the same characterisitics
as their NTSC predecessors which are still present for compatibilty
reasons, plus video compatibility.. Has anyone tried renaming the
dblNTSC Icon to NTSC, or even with filezap and editing the monitor
file.. This sounds like a hack, but if I remember the 2.04 monitor
ICONS in tooltypes you could rename the mode if you kept the address
in hex the same..
I don't think it's fair to complain about Commodore supporting new
graphics modes. I think it's more fair to complain at developers for
not having new software ready that supports these modes *NOW* We have
had AmigaDOS 2.04 for over a couple of years and if these so-called
Commercial developers were supporting 2.04 for real, not just the
look at feel we would have support for multiple graphics
graphics modes right now.. Not just those of the original graphics
chips. Commodore set forth standards and gave them and developers
plenty of time to implement them.. Why doesn't Gold Disk,
Softlogik, etc. support the display database functionality that
has been here for a while.. Commodore never ever said they would
support de-interlacing as a forever feature (but gee doesn't
that seem to be what they have done with the dblNTSC modes). Why
doesn't ADPRO support public screens as a tooltype??
> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
>about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
>video chip. I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the
>Display Enhancer internally to the Lisa chip. I realise now that I was wrong.
>The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
>form in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the
>A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with
>very tight color restrictions. I have also found that the "Promoter" is not
>hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0. With 3.0, the OS
>can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open DblNTSC
>and DblPAL screens instead. This has lots and lots of problems, though, which
>I will get to in a bit.
>
I hope someone from Commodore clarifies this because this doesn't make
sense to me what you are saying.. Scan doubling the NTSC modes to
de-interlace them seems like a compatible way of doing things to me..
However some people may think that you mean scan doubling NTSC modes
on the ECS would be the same thing as productivity mode in the multiscan
monitor icon from workbench, which it's not because they have distictly
different pixel screen sizes (640x400 versus 640x480).. Also, technically
the mode works different too as I understand it with relation to sprites
etc..
> The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>at 15Khz no matter what. The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
>a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
>of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
>as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open interlaced
>screens. And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about it
>until the software is updated to support the A4000. Additionally, all games
>will have scan-lines on an A4000.
>
Awe Gee, why should we blame Commodore for this problem, when these
developers have had way long enough to support 2.04 features including
the display database in full.. I haven't seen a truly 2.04 specific
program yet.. Even ADPRO which supports 2.x much better than any
program out there (I could say that about 3.x too!) still is 1.3
runnable, and doesn't support the 2.x display database feature..
Nothing the owner can do?? Why not write the so called commercial
developers now and tell them to truly support 2.04 at least.. This
is ridiculous.. There can't be *THAT* many owners still only using
1.3.. If so I'd be suprised..
Also, why doesn't someone sit down and write a hack or a new monitor
icon that just substitutes the dblntsc modes for the ntsc modes..
It can't be that difficult.. If it only works on productivity
software that's just fine.. Most people who own 4000's this early
on probably didn't buy them to run 1.3 games on it..
Also here is a temporary fix for A4000 owners now with multiscans:
Set the display to dblntsc mode on the workbench..
Under the tooltypes of Pagestream or Pro Page etc.. type the
following:
SCREEN=WORKBENCH
Save the tooltypes out and run your program.. It won't take
advantage of the extra colors, but it will allow you to open
your software on a flicker free 16 color display, and because
the software will only use 4 of those colors it should be
blazingly fast on the A4000.. Now you can run your favorite
productivity software (except DPAINT) until a new version
of it works with your extra colors and just might support
the extended palette as well..
> It gets worse, though. With the A4000, it is no longer possible to use
>high-quality monitors that can only sync to frequencies of 31Khz and up. To
>be usable on an A4000, the monitor **MUST** be able to sync as low as 15Khz.
>This is because of the very reasons I stated above. If a user were to try to
>use a VGA or multisync monitor that cannot handle the 15Khz frequencies, the
>display would by reduced to garbage every time a program or game opened a
>15Khz NTSC or PAL screen. Don't worry, it gets even worse than this. It
>turns out that the DblPAL and DblNTSC modes are output at 29Khz, not 31Khz.
>This means that if a monitor were used that cannot sync to frequencies lower
>than 31Khz, the only modes usable would be the few and unsupported VGA modes
>(including the Productivity mode).
>
Some people think if you have enough money to buy an A4000 you might
be able to afford a new monitor which takes advantage of it's new
modes and the 1960 isn't that expensive..
Also many of the older Multiscanning monitors which aren't
being made anymore can do 15Khz and up to 1024x768 interlaced on a PC
which you are not using it for anyway.. With the A4000 who needs high
VGA frequencies anyway, especially if the hardware doesn't support it.
This is a good opportunity for a lot of PC owners to sell their used
1024x768 SuperVGA monitors on misc.forsale to people who want them
now, since they have been going real cheap because PC people want
the non-interlaced type..
> What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
>already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz? If this person were
>to "upgrade" from an A3000 to an A4000, he or she would have to borrow a
>monitor that can handle the 15Khz frequencies just to boot the machine. This
>is because the A4000 probably defaults to a 15Khz 640x200 NTSC mode as it is
>configured out of the box. The user would have to borrow a low-frequency
>monitor just to adjust the preferences to yield a Productivity screen, so
>that the system would be at all usable. And even then the system would be
>only marginally usable, as every other program and all games produced a
>garbaged display on the monitor.
>
You intimate that the problem is not fixable through software could
someone from CATS please clarify..
> In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
>have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
>thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
>and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
>were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
>ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
>that will work with the A4000.
>
>
Gee, that means there must be some very inexpensive used ones out there
available from PC owners looking to sell it to get a 72hz non-lace model
for their PC's right?? Otherwise new owners will have to buy the
Commodore brand monitor and make things just a little more profitable
for Commodore and it's dealers so they can stay in business right??
> The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just how
>much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced display
>resolution. The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect. So
>I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000 not
>purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
>Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just the
>area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
>the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
>
Hard disk access may be a definite question here, but why wait for a 3rd
party, the video slot is free in the A4000 why not try to stick a
2320 in it and see if it works.. It should work because the video
slot is backwards compat. *IF* there isn't any weirdness going on..
All you have really done is suggested that Commodore hasn't fixed the
flicker problem.. If the software developers were doing what they
should for the past two years this wouldn't be a problem.. except with
some old games.s. Most people who know about the operating system think
this could be fixed easily in software. Why make it a big issue.. It's
a shrt term growing pain problem..
Has anyone tried plugging in a GVP or some other maker SCSI controller
into the A4000's zorro III? It should work if you really can't make
due with the built-in until some 3rd party or Commodore comes out with
a SCSI-II controller that makes Zorro III scream...
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
>be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
>have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend does
>not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
>
Sounds like you are really upset here at Commodore.. Why promogate the
rumor that Amiga graphics still flicker?? Someone e-mailed me who hadn't
seen the machine and asked me that.. I said yes, some of the old modes
do, but wait until you start using the new 8 bit modes and HAM8 modes
that don't. The new modes and speed far outway these temporary problems
that are severely magnified.. Are you buying the new machine on the
potential the new capabilities ad, or are you buying it just to stay
compatible with what you had.. If so, keep your old machine and buy
a PC or A MAC to go along side it.. That should solve the problem..
Me I am buying on the new products potential. I also will buy hardware
like a monitor made specifically to take advantage of it, not for
some other platform..
Marc: Note I am not flaming you, nor defending my purchase as so many
people have here (or C= for that matter).. I have a 486 also sitting
around here too.. I like it, but it has other deficientcies where the
Amiga does not as well.. On a whole I still like the Amiga better..
Note I also need to learn how to spell better or at least learn how
to use the unix spell checker..
=DonB=
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
> Amiga 4000: JUST SAY NO!!!!
--
******************************************************
dbur...@emunix.emich.edu
EMU Mathematics Lab Consultant
President, CreativEdge Systems
1436 N Prospect, Ypsilanti, MI 48198
Erik Funkenbusch
>
> To improve the usability of the increased color. But according to some
>people, it still is not quite fast enough. Some have said that the 640x400
>non-interlaced 256-color mode is slower than the 16-color mode on the A3000.
>This would make it unusable, IMO.
I just saw the 4000 at one of my local dealers.. 256 color is *NOT* slower
than 16 color on a 3000. It's roughly the same in some ways, in others it's
better. considering that multi-view seems to use the interleaved blittering
there's no visible bitmap scroll.
Michael Neylon
One chip missing from Commodore's newest machine (A4000) is
the A3000 display enhancer, which creates a non-interlaced,
flicker-free display. Because of the increased bandwidth and
programmability of the chips (the AA chips), software can
define a deinterlaced, flicker-free screen, provided you
use a multisync monitor.
The AA chipset also has a fourfold increase in bandwidth effectively
quadrupleing the performance speed of the graphics, not to mention
the 32-bit access to chip memory as aposed to the older 16-bit chip set.
It also has several new, and inhanced old screens as well as a full
24-bit color palette, try HAM displays with 256,000 colors instead of
4096. You need to here more? then read the article.
-MN
--
Michael Neylon aka Masem the Great and Almighty Thermodynamics GOD!
// | Senior, Chemical Engineering, Univ. of Toledo
\\ // Only the | Summer Intern, NASA Lewis Research Center
\ \X/ AMIGA! | mne...@jupiter.cse.utoledo.edu /
Daniel Barrett
> We can end this quickly, just by finding out once and for all what the
>default video mode of the A4000 is, as it comes out-of-the-box.
I don't know about the A4000, but the default, out-of-the-box video
mode of the A3000 is an interlaced hires screen. I don't see why Commodore
would mess with it.
Dan
//////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
| Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center |
| University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 -- bar...@cs.umass.edu |
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
Hsu I-wei
|> In article <copes.718604729@marsh> co...@cs.curtin.edu.au (Simon Cope) writes:
|> >bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
|> >>all resolution modes (except for the Super HiRes modes, which are limited in
|> >>color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
|> >>display.
|> >
|> >Or the Euro72 and Super72 modes.
|>
|> the Euro72 modes work fine with the display enhancer on the A3000 I use.
|> You have no clue about what you are talking about.
Excuse me, if you call him clueless because you think he made one mistake, WHAT
DOES THAT MAKE YOU? Euro72 hires interlaced does not get fixed correctly by
the A3000 display enhancer. You get this wavy effect which I consider more of
a nuisance than interlace flicker.
|> BTW, I have not been able to find ANY low-radiation multisync monitors
|> that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz. Some people do worry about
|> low-freqency electromagnetic radiation from computer monitors, and the A4000
|> would force these people to use normal monitors that emit high amounts of
|> this radiation.
NEC 3DS. do you know what the difference is between an NEC 3DS and NEC 3D??
TAKE A GOOD GUESS.
|>
|> ---
|> | Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
Francis
Peter da Silva
> This is a good opportunity for a lot of PC owners to sell their used
> 1024x768 SuperVGA monitors on misc.forsale to people who want them
> now, since they have been going real cheap because PC people want
> the non-interlaced type..
Dan: I'll buy your old VGA monitor from you, if you can't use it on your
new A4000 (since you'd never keep an obsolete computer, right?).
--
Peter da Silva. <pe...@sugar.neosoft.com>.
`-_-' "Segodnja volka obnimal?"
'U`
Dette kan umulig vaere mitt rom, eftersom jeg ikke puster ammoniakk.
Michael van Elst
> You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
>done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as hardware.
>With the A3000, all screens can be promoted to 31Khz through hardware, which
>cannot be bypassed by any software program. With the A4000, if a program
>explicitly opens an interlaced NTSC or PAL screen, the screen will flicker
But nearly no program will open a NTSC or PAL screen.
>and there will be nothing you can do about it. On the A4000 there are also
>no facilities available to promote non-interlaced 640x200 or 320x200
>screens to 31Khz to remove the scan-lines.
Wrong.
Regards,
--
Michael van Elst
UUCP: universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
Internet: p55...@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
"A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
Michael van Elst
> I have played games on the A3000 with the display enhancer turned on, and
>it has NEVER been a problem. I have never really noticed the ghosting that
>you speak of. Its there if objects ont he screen move REALLY raplidly, but
>how often do you see this happening in most games?
I think that you will see it very often if a game really uses interlace.
The C= deinterlacer effectively avoids the ghosting when scan-doubling
non-interlaced resolutions.
> BTW, I have not been able to find ANY low-radiation multisync monitors
>that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz. Some people do worry about
>low-freqency electromagnetic radiation from computer monitors, and the A4000
>would force these people to use normal monitors that emit high amounts of
>this radiation.
That would mean that YOU are forced to use a "high radiation" monitor as
YOU are unable to find a monitor. Let me tell you, there are many of them.
> It goes along with Commodore's marketing strategy to force Amiga owners to
>only be able to use Commodore's HD drives, I suppose. It's not a marketing
>strategy that I agree with.
That's not marketing strategy.. it's a hardware limitation.
Thomas Strauss
PLEASE! Only those Multisyncs that are still available. NEC 3D is out
of production.
My dream-display would be an EIZO 9060, but it is out of production like the
NEC3D...
So, please, before you post a Monitor, check its availability.
If you have seen the display quality, post your opinion about it, too.
Thank you very much!
Thomas, desperatly searching for a Monitor >14'' with HSync 15-35kHz...
--
Thomas Strauss You can reach me via:
Josefstr.64 Internet: th...@stud.uni-sb.de
6637 Nalbach Voice: +49 (0) 6838 84739
(Germany)
Thomas Strauss
Marc Barret writes:
> We can end this quickly, just by finding out once and for all what the
> default video mode of the A4000 is, as it comes out-of-the-box. If it is
> the 640x200 15Khz NTSC mode, and if a user has upgraded to an A4000 from an
> A3000 and only has a monitor that can handle frequencies fron 31Khz on up,
> then the user WILL have to borrow a monitor to boot the computer the first
> time.
Yes, as I experienced, they come out of the box configured to 15kHz, what I
think is good, because you would fry your 1084 if you connected it to 31kHz...
But as 15kHz is PAL you can take any TV-Set, connect it to the AMIGA (Ok, you
need a scart cable) set the right Screenmode. Then switch of TV with the
Mousepointer over the SAVE Button. You press the Button, switch of your A4000
and connect the 31kHz Monitor.
It is a bit of a workaround but you do not need an 15-38 KHz Monitor just to
set up your system.
bye
Thomas
Jakob G}rdsted
>In article <1992Oct8....@athena.mit.edu> fi...@athena.mit.edu (Hsu I-wei) writes:
> We can end this quickly, just by finding out once and for all what the
>default video mode of the A4000 is, as it comes out-of-the-box. If it is
>the 640x200 15Khz NTSC mode, and if a user has upgraded to an A4000 from an
>A3000 and only has a monitor that can handle frequencies fron 31Khz on up,
>then the user WILL have to borrow a monitor to boot the computer the first
>time.
No, only wimps has to. Any fool can still read the text. I have used
A2024 mode on my 1084 for a year now, and it works OK. I agree it can
be annoying with the rolling image sometimes, but you get what you pay for.
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
> A4000: JUST SAY NO!!!
--
Jakob Gaardsted . . | Black Rainbow(TM) . . .
Computer Science Department . |. Invaporated . . . .
University of Aarhus, Jylland(!)| . . . Cordless Life . .
. pil...@daimi.aau.dk . | . . . Pointless Mouse .
Aric....@ofa123.fidonet.org
> From: bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett)
> Message-ID: 1992Oct9.2...@news.iastate.edu
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
>
> You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
> done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as
> hardware.
No, its NOT. "Promotion" is an OS feature, howerver, it requires the new
HARDWARE of the A4000. The new non-interlaced IE "flicker-fixed" modes of
the A4000 are done IN HARDWARE WITH THE AGA CHIPSET.
> With the A3000, all screens can be promoted to 31Khz through hardware,
> which
> cannot be bypassed by any software program. With the A4000, if a program
> explicitly opens an interlaced NTSC or PAL screen, the screen will flicker
> and there will be nothing you can do about it. On the A4000 there are
And who's fault is that? Let met tell you: THE SOFTWARE WRITERS! Its NOT
Commodore's fault! Its not the A4000's fault! Its the fault of software
that does not use the display database in 2.0/3.0.
Bitch and whine to the software makers!! (not that they'll listen to the
likes of you).
> also
> no facilities available to promote non-interlaced 640x200 or 320x200
> screens to 31Khz to remove the scan-lines.
DblNTSC. You CAN do it.
> The real test is to hook a monitor to an A4000 than can only handle
> frequencies from 27Khz and higher. If, during normal usage of the
> computer
> (the usage of Super HiRes or Super72 modes not counted) the display ever
> reverts to garbage for whatever reason -- whether from using programs like
> DPaint or from using games -- then the A4000 is inferior to an A3000 in
> terms
> of non-interlaced display resolution. I know for a fact that it is
It wouldnt be the A4000 that would be inferior, it would be the SOFTWARE
which doesnt understand how to properly use the display-database.
> -!-
> | Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
> -!------------------------------------------------
> A4000: JUST SAY NO!!!
(your signature included unchanged so that people's kill-files will work)
--- Maximus 2.00
Henning Hucke
> While Marc does seem to be correct that you need a 15khz monitor, he says
> that the C= Monitor is the only one that supports this. This is also
> wrong, In a recent tour through computer shopper i found dozens of them,
> including names such as Nanao, Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC and others..
While it might be true that one has a real choice of a Monitor to buy
if one buys an Amiga4000 configuration as his/her first computer, someone
who already owens an Amiga with a typical Mutisync might very often be
forced to sell his/her Multisync if changing to the Amiga4000.
I would have to sell an excellent NEC MultiSync 4FG with a pretty good loss
of money if I would change to an Amiga4000 (No good situation. This again
makes me think that Commodore is only looking for first-time-amiga-buyers
and leaving the long-term-amiga-oweners in the desert!!!!)
> UUCP: {amdahl!tcnet, crash}!orbit!pnet51!chucks
> ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!chu...@nosc.mil
> INET: chu...@pnet51.orb.mn.org
Henning
---- Henning Hucke -- Halberstaedter Str. 16 -- D-W-3180 Wolfsburg 1 ----
---------------- Voice/Data: +49-(0)5361-774775 -------------------------
-- FIDO: Henning_Hucke%2:240/520.100 -- USENET: H_H...@bdb.bs.open.de --
------------------------- ZNET: H_H...@BDB.ZER -------------------------
Marc N Barrett
>
>Marc Barret writes:
>> We can end this quickly, just by finding out once and for all what the
>> default video mode of the A4000 is, as it comes out-of-the-box. If it is
>> the 640x200 15Khz NTSC mode, and if a user has upgraded to an A4000 from an
>> A3000 and only has a monitor that can handle frequencies fron 31Khz on up,
>> then the user WILL have to borrow a monitor to boot the computer the first
>> time.
>
>Yes, as I experienced, they come out of the box configured to 15kHz, what I
>think is good, because you would fry your 1084 if you connected it to 31kHz...
>
>But as 15kHz is PAL you can take any TV-Set, connect it to the AMIGA (Ok, you
>need a scart cable) set the right Screenmode. Then switch of TV with the
>Mousepointer over the SAVE Button. You press the Button, switch of your A4000
>and connect the 31kHz Monitor.
>
>It is a bit of a workaround but you do not need an 15-38 KHz Monitor just to
>set up your system.
What is a TV set, then, but a 15Khz monitor? Then I was right when I
stated that if your monitor will not handle frequencies below 31Khz, then you
will have to use a monitor that will handle 15Khz to boot the computer.
>
>bye
> Thomas
>--
>Thomas Strauss You can reach me via:
>Josefstr.64 Internet: th...@stud.uni-sb.de
>6637 Nalbach Voice: +49 (0) 6838 84739
>(Germany)
>--
>Thomas Strauss You can reach me via:
>Josefstr.64 Internet: th...@stud.uni-sb.de
>6637 Nalbach Voice: +49 (0) 6838 84739
>(Germany)
I should flame you into the ground for posting your signature twice, because
once when I had problems with my newsreader appending my signature twice
(which wasn't my fault at all) people flamed me into the ground for it. But
I won't do it.
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
Slick Willie Clinton: JUST SAY NO!!!
Marc N Barrett
>> Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
>> From: bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett)
>> Message-ID: 1992Oct9.2...@news.iastate.edu
>> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
>>
>> You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
>> done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as
>> hardware.
>
>No, its NOT. "Promotion" is an OS feature, howerver, it requires the new
>HARDWARE of the A4000. The new non-interlaced IE "flicker-fixed" modes of
>the A4000 are done IN HARDWARE WITH THE AGA CHIPSET.
Not quite. The modes are DblNTSC and DblPAL, which are partly achievable
on any Amiga with the ECS. DblNTSC and DblPAL on such an Amiga would have
a max. of 2 bitplanes and a 64-color palette, though, so the extra depth of
the A4000 is needed to get these with at least the same color capabilities
as the standard PAL and NTSC modes. The modes are programmed from software,
and the "promotion" feature is software too.
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
Aric....@ofa123.fidonet.org
> From: u915...@cs.uow.edu.au (Gerardo Bentancor)
> Message-ID: 1992Oct9....@cs.uow.edu.au
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
> people
> >remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
> >offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But
> to
> >its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key
> >technologies, either.
>
>
> >improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at
> >just what the costs
> >have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
>
> laid
> your hands on yet!)
>
> lots
> >of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on
> a
> >19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly
> sharp
> >picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
> >and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display
> Enhancer,
>
>
> confused
>
>
>
> > The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just
> how
> >much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced
> display
> >resolution. The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect.
> So
> >I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000
> not
> >purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
>
>
> an
> >A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as
> DIG
> >becomes available for the Amiga. (The A4000 retrogrades
> >in more than just the
> >area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of
> SCSI,
> >the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
> to
> >be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered
> >Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
> >have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend
> does
> >not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
**Sometime in the near to distant possible future**
> Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
> From: bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett)
> Message-ID: 1992Oct9.2...@news.iastate.edu
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.everywhereicananoyamigapeople
> Over <time period unknown> years ago, when the Amiga 4000 came out, many
>people remember how much I flamed the system because it headed in reverse in
>the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to its credit,
>the A4000 did not stand still on all the rest of its key technologies.
Point Number 1: You Flamed the A4000...
> The A5000 is a different story. With the A5000, the only substantial
>improvement is graphics. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the
>costs have been to improve the graphics capabilities. In the key area of
Point Number 2: You Flamed the A5000... (which I'm sure you have never laid
your hands on yet!)
>display flicker-free. Because of the AGA chipset, the A4000 is able to
>run almost all software, and display 262144 colours on monitors. I know
>one person who found a bargain on a nice multisync monitor which displays
>all of the A4000 modes. The promotion feature really did work well. And
>the IDE was faster than I thought it would be. And the A4000 cost less
>than other computers.
So now you have decided that A4000 wasn't too bad after all...
> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
A Little Confused! My friend you are very confused about a lot of things..
[ A lot of other crap deleted ]
> The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just how
>much the A5000 stands still in the important area of CPU speed, price, HD
>compatibility, etc. The system is vastly inferior to the A4000 in this
>respect. Its 40Mhz 68040 is only marginaly faster than the A4000, it costs
>$1000 more than the A4000, its 1280 x 1024 resolution is just too many
>pixels for the typical 13" monitor, and it only has 8 megs of chip ram. With
>four times as many pixels 8 megs isnt enough! And the 2560 x 800 mode is
>interlaced!! Give me a break! And I dont need 24 bits per pixel, its as
>slow as 8 bits was on the A4000! I seriously recommend that anyone
>considering the purchase of an A5000 not purchase one, at least until a
>Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
Yes Mr World Acclaimed Authority on All Aspects Amiga (WAAAAA)
>Some people might want to simply abandon the A5000 altogether, purchase an
>A4000 instead, and upgrade it with third-party products. (The A5000 stands
>still and retrogrades in many ways, though. Due to its use of SCSI instead
>of IDE, the A5000 costs more in the area of HD expansion as well)
>
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas minus every 3rd odd number Amiga have
>turned out to be the marginaly good systems. I hope this trend does not
>continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A7000.
>
> -!-
> | Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
> -!------------------------------------------------
> A5000: JUST SAY NO!!!
--- Maximus 2.00
Dave Haynie
> The A4000 is a totally different story. At first, I was a little confused
>about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
>I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the Display Enhancer
>internally to the Lisa chip. I realise now that I was wrong. The
>scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same form
>in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the A4000's
>DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with very
>tight color restrictions.
News flash: you're still confused. It's your only career.
The Lisa's scan doubler function allows it to send the same scan line out twice,
in order to allows a display to use twice the number of lines it was designed
for. This allows the OS to promote a 640x200 or 640x256 screen to a 640x400 or
640x512 resolution while maintaining the proper aspect ratio. The ECS chips
could not do this, DblNTSC and DblPAL are impossible on ECS.
>I have also found that the "Promoter" is not hardware at all, but simply a
>function of AmigaDOS 3.0.
Yeah, like Colombus "found" America. The promotion mechanism, with respect to
ECS non-interlaced screens, relies on this line-doubling hardware. It also
relies on the OS setting up the proper display.
>With 3.0, the OS can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens,
The OS is what opens screens. It's hardly "intercepting" calls.
> The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of a Display Enhancer.
>With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
>handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
>opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
>at 15Khz no matter what.
That's a problem with the program, not the A4000. It's much like a PC program
that insists on opening a display in Hercules or EGA mode. My recommendation
is that you throw such programs out (well, not you Marc, since you don't have
an A4000).
>The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for a tiny few, well-written
>Amiga programs, and no games.
Actually, it works for quite a bit of stuff. Of course, never having owned
such a machine or any recent software, you won't know anything about this. It
even handles some games properly. In fact, all the games that were written
to the OS Amiga specifications. It's much like the set of Mac games that run
on the Quadra.
>This means that a user of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering
>display in programs such as PageStream,
PageStream works great. Open it on Workbench, version 2.2 even knows about the
8-bit palette if you have one, and it works fine in Moniterm (1024x800) or
SUPER72 overscanned (890x620) resolutions.
>Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>becomes available for the Amiga.
Other people might want to stick with their A500 and just badmouth stuff they're
too cheap to buy or too ignorant to understand. Naaa, couldn't happen...
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
"The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
"I got a pocket full of kryptonite" -Spin Doctors
Jim Lathrop
--
James Lathrop
Iowa State University
j...@iastate.edu
Terje Normann Marthinussen
produced anymore....
Anyone care to mention a 17" to use?????
I don't really care so much about 15kHz, what frustrates me is the 24.62kHz
in 800x600 mode and also those 29kHz updates....
I don't really like to support Marc opinions, but I really would like it
if C= would give us the possibility to choose from the high end monitors which
are on the market like NEC (pleeaaassse not say 3D one more time, it's dead,
finito, out of production, old, outdated and hard to get), Sony, EIZO etc.
Terje Marthinussen
ter...@stud.cs.uit.no
Bernhard Moellemann
>In <1992Oct9.2...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>> You are posting nonsense. The "flicker-fixing" features of the A4000 is
>>done entirely in software, and I do not trust software as much as hardware.
>>With the A3000, all screens can be promoted to 31Khz through hardware, which
>>cannot be bypassed by any software program. With the A4000, if a program
>>explicitly opens an interlaced NTSC or PAL screen, the screen will flicker
>
>But nearly no program will open a NTSC or PAL screen.
Perhaps he's running TagScreens without NOMON-option? Then _most_ of his
screens _will_ explicitly ask for NTSC:...
--
Bernhard Moellemann <spare space> Chairman of the Nessy-Fan-Club //
internet=z...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de <space> FIDO=2:241/7506.42 IRC=ZZA //
nessynet=008 Lifenet=77:7700/11.42 greetings to my Marsupilami \\ //
2000/500 Technical Reference Manual: "A1000, the original Amiga" \X/
Ricardo Hernandez | 802-36-4453
Well, another Marc Barret collection.... I think Marc Barret Blew up with this
one *BIG TIME*! Let's see, ATARI Lynx uses Amiga chipset, Notepad 2.0 is really bad,
AmigaWorld lies about Amiga Links, the Alice chip in the A4000 can support more than
2 megs of chip ram, the A4000 was designed out of the A3000 architecture, and now this.
I guess that Marc Barret could be an excellent congress-man, judging by the amount
of lies. He even sticks to them for a while.
- Raist
The Bewildered One
>|>
>|> >The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for a tiny few, well-written
>|> >Amiga programs, and no games.
>|>
>|> Actually, it works for quite a bit of stuff. Of course, never having owned
>|> such a machine or any recent software, you won't know anything about this. It
Well there is a program that will force almost all screens to be opened into
DBl*.
>|> 8-bit palette if you have one, and it works fine in Moniterm (1024x800) or
>|> SUPER72 overscanned (890x620) resolutions.
Wait a minute dave. What is with this Moniterm (1024x800). This display mode
was not discussed before. Is this a new color interlaced display? Or
is it a gray scale display.
Martin
Ville-Matti Kiili
: No, only wimps has to. Any fool can still read the text. I have used
: A2024 mode on my 1084 for a year now, and it works OK. I agree it can
: be annoying with the rolling image sometimes, but you get what you pay for.
Are you kidding? I tested A2024 mode on my Nec Multisync II and the
screen was really messed up. It was entirely unusable. And my monitor
really can show anything (I've tested it with 150 Hz screens and it
worked... 160 Hz was too much. :) )...
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Ville-Matti Kiili | What should I | // Only Amiga makes |
| vmk...@cc.helsinki.fi | put here? | \X/ it impossible... |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Meiklejohn
>
>Nothing is stopping you from buying the ZorroII Display enhancer C= currently
>sells. This should work fine on a 4000 as much as 2000.
No, there's a small problem. Commodore's display enhancer, or any of the
"flicker fixers", work by recording each field in a frame store, then
outputting the frame at 31 kHz. The data stored is actually the 12-bit colour
value for each pixel, gathered in digital form from the video slot. Therefore,
assuming that the 24-bit video slot is an upward compatible extension of the
12-bit slot, so that the 2320 could be plugged in and able to work, it could
still only access and store 12 bits of colour data. There goes your 24-bit
palette.
As far as I can see, it should work, but it's a far from optimal solution.
You'd need a display enhancer with twice the frame store ram, and hence twice
the cost. Also, if you tried to build one fast enough to deal with 35 ns
pixels (superhires, 800x600), not only would you need twice the ram again, but
it would be very, very expensive.
--
David Meiklejohn (also known as dav...@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
- Regional support guy for PC's, Unix, and networks thereof.
- But I'd rather be using an AMIGA! Wouldn't you?
Find me in Mareeba, Australia (on the pointy bit in the northeast)
Hans Bergengren
EB> So it won't run on a >=31KHz MultiScan (BTW, MultiSync is an NEC
EB> trademark... Not many people know that :)
Off-topic remark: MultiScan is probably trademarked by someone else.
'Amiga' is also a trademark, as well as Commodore, CBM, Quantum, NEC etc etc
etc. Writing "(tm)" after each and every trademark protected word in a message
is both stupid and silly, so why bother?
EB> PPS: MB, please reduce your postings to one line or less, I'm NOT
EB> impressed with your ability to talk out of your a** using a keyboard.
:D
Regards:
InterNET/BadNET: Hans_Be...@p1.thulos.bbs.bad.se (92:901/603.1)
FidoNET: Hogen BBS, 2:203/511.7@fidonet
/ /
/--/
/ /B - < Proverb narrator STILL on vacation. >
--- Point Manager 3.00 Beta Unreg.
Michael Sinz
>In article <1992Oct7.1...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
[other good responces by Dave have been deleted as we all know who is right]
>>Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
>>A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
>>becomes available for the Amiga.
>
>Other people might want to stick with their A500 and just badmouth stuff they're
>too cheap to buy or too ignorant to understand. Naaa, couldn't happen...
Well, maybe even some will sell the A500, have no computer at all, and still
complain about a machine they know nothing about but would buy in a minute
if they could...
Like you said Dave: couldn't happen...
...with an intelligent human.
/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
| /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
| /// Operating System Development Group |
| /// BIX: msinz UUNET: m...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
|\\\/// Luck sometimes visits a fool, |
| \XX/ but never sits down with him. |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
David Connors
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>| Ville-Matti Kiili | What should I | // Only Amiga makes |
>| vmk...@cc.helsinki.fi | put here? | \X/ it impossible... |
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Try "Marc Barrett SUCKS"
Dave Connors - D.Co...@sct.gu.edu.au Griffith University, Australia
- -- ---=-==-=================================================-==--=--- -- -
" I'd rather have bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. "
- Unknown
- -- ---=-==-=================================================-==--=--- -- -
Kiernan Holland
>been posted here by diskspeed performance tests, it's about the same, if not
>faster than the stock 3000's HD and SCSI.
I heard that IDE is about as fast as SCSI until you hit the really
big hard drives like the 600 and 1.2 GIG drives.
Hans Bergengren
DH> The Lisa's scan doubler function allows it to send the same scan line out
DH> twice, in order to allows a display to use twice the number of lines
DH> it was designed for.
Does this mean that Lisa buffers one scanline, or that it actually fetches one
scanline twice from chipram (like with the proper copperlist/modulo settings
with ECS Denise)? If the situation is the second version, this would mean
twice the contention on the chipram bus, and cut down graphics speed. Not
good. Could you spread some light over this matter (please)?
Regards.
InterNET/BadNET: Hans_Be...@p1.thulos.bbs.bad.se (92:901/603.1)
FidoNET: Hogen BBS, 2:203/511.7@fidonet
/ /
/--/
/ /B - No Mr. Nice-Guy Anymore...
Rick H
> Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
> remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
> offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga. But to
> its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key technologies, either.
> HD access, HD speed, and CPU speed. It offered no improvements in the key
> areas of sound and color graphics capabilities. But it was in no way worse
> than Amigas that came before it in any areas.
> improvement is color. And it becomes clearer every day at just what the costs
> have been to improve the color capabilities. In the key area of display
> that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.
> The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature. It allows
> color capability on the A3000 anyway) to be boosted to a high-quality 31Khz
> substantially by removing the scan-lines. And interlaced modes are now totally
> of very high-quality monitors. I know one person who found a bargain on a
> 19" workstation monitor which syncs down to 31Khz, offers a brilliantly sharp
> picture with lots of colors (as many colors as any computer can put out),
> and just plain works beautifully with the A3000. With the Display Enhancer,
> down to 15Khz because it never has to.
> about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA Lisa
> The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
> form in the ECS Denise. In fact, it should be possible to generate the
> A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but with
> hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0. With 3.0, the OS
> can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open DblNTSC
> and DblPAL screens instead. This has lots and lots of problems, though, which
> I will get to in a bit.
> With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will only
> handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up. If an Amiga problem insists on
> opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be opened
> a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games. This means that a user
> screens. And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about it
> until the software is updated to support the A4000. Additionally, all games
> will have scan-lines on an A4000.
> It gets worse, though. With the A4000, it is no longer possible to use
> high-quality monitors that can only sync to frequencies of 31Khz and up. To
> be usable on an A4000, the monitor **MUST** be able to sync as low as 15Khz.
> This is because of the very reasons I stated above. If a user were to try to
> use a VGA or multisync monitor that cannot handle the 15Khz frequencies, the
> display would by reduced to garbage every time a program or game opened a
> 15Khz NTSC or PAL screen. Don't worry, it gets even worse than this. It
> turns out that the DblPAL and DblNTSC modes are output at 29Khz, not 31Khz.
> This means that if a monitor were used that cannot sync to frequencies lower
> than 31Khz, the only modes usable would be the few and unsupported VGA modes
> (including the Productivity mode).
> What would this mean to someone such as the person I mentioned above, who
> already has a monitor that cannot sync lower than 31Khz? If this person were
> to "upgrade" from an A3000 to an A4000, he or she would have to borrow a
> monitor that can handle the 15Khz frequencies just to boot the machine. This
> is because the A4000 probably defaults to a 15Khz 640x200 NTSC mode as it is
> configured out of the box. The user would have to borrow a low-frequency
> monitor just to adjust the preferences to yield a Productivity screen, so
> that the system would be at all usable. And even then the system would be
> only marginally usable, as every other program and all games produced a
> garbaged display on the monitor.
> In short, many A3000 owners who have been using high-quality monitors will
> have to replace their monitors with inferior ones usable on the A4000. I have
> thoroughly checked to monitors that can handle frequencies as low as 15Khz,
> and few such monitors have ever been manufactured. Many of the ones that
> were developed have been discontinued since I checked for them over two years
> ago. The Commodore monitors are just about the only monitors available now
> that will work with the A4000.
> The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just how
> much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced display
> resolution. The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect. So
> I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000 not
> purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.
> A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG
> area of display resolution, though. Due to its use of IDE instead of SCSI,
> the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)
> BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
> be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and A4000)
> have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit. I hope this trend does
> not continue. But even if it does, at least it bodes well for the A5000.
> Amiga 4000: JUST SAY NO!!!!
This is VERY dated information. I realize this is 30 years old, but people see the headline and take that as granted. The thing about the A4000 and where it shines is the fact that it was designed to be expanded! Put a top end graphics board in it and it can push the limits of even the best monitor out there! I use an MNT ZZ9000 in mine and the graphics are incredible! It also handles the scan-doubling, so no problems on modern monitors.
Other things with this card, unlike the A3000, with this graphics card, you have a USB port and drivers to make the USB Port read thumb drives! This gives you the ability to quickly and easily transfer data between your PC and your Amiga. Not only that, but with a Roadshow TCP addon board (plugs onto the MNT ZZ9000 graphics board), you have the ability to use this same card to connect to the internet! The same card also has a significant fast ram upgrade!
With cards like these, as well as other even higher performance accelerator cards, the A4000 DOES have its place. Most of what is in this article is very dated. By today's standards, the differences in hard drive performance, specifically SCSI vs IDE is nearly meaningless, because actual hard drives are almost never used these days! Most people use a compact flash adapter and make themselves a 16gb or 32gb hard drive on a CF and you are set. If you want to play around with say amiga unix, just put in a new CF and you have an entirely different hard drive. The A4000 is catching the emotional ire of people here that were hoping the Commodore and the Amiga would have continued on for decade, moving along to higher performance CPUs, etc., like the PCs did. Without any accelerators, the A4000 is the fastest Commodore Amiga made.