tlz@druxu.UUCP (ZrustTL) (11/15/85)
Oops! I deleted the original posters name. Sorry. >I have a problem calling OMNIVIEW an 80-col board. (Please correct me >if I am wrong, DY...) From what I understand, OMNIVIEW is not a full >character 80-col generating board, but rather an 80-col SIMULATION in >GR.8. Meaning 4-bit wide characters....acceptable but NOT genuinely >(in my view) an 80 column board. You've hit upon an important topic that all prospective 80 column board purchasers should be made aware of. I've seen some of the GR8 based "simulations" and they are pretty awful, even on my 900 line resolution monitor. Actually, the resolution of the monitor is not important anyway since these "simulations" really only produce 3 pixel wide characters (you have to have 1 pixel of space between characters). After squinting at pseudocharacters for about 3 hours, you'll see what I mean. The only real solution is an adjunct to Atari's graphics/video using a real character generator ROM or a higher resolution bit-mapped display. Is this what the rumored RGB/80 column board used before its demise? druxu!tlz _ Terry L. Zrust (_) /~\ AT&T Information Systems /~\ / \/\ 11900 North Pecos Street / \ /\ / | \ \ Denver, Colorado 80234 /\ / \ \/ /|\ \ \ Mail Stop 30L49 / \ / \ / //|\\ \ \ (303) 538-4547 ___ \_/ ___ \ ///|\\\ _\ Cornet 374-4547 _________________ _______ | _________ -- druxu!tlz _ Terry L. Zrust (_) /~\ AT&T Information Systems /~\ / \/\ 11900 North Pecos Street / \ /\ / | \ \ Denver, Colorado 80234 /\ / \ \/ /|\ \ \ Mail Stop 30L49 / \ / \ / //|\\ \ \ (303) 538-4547 ___ \_/ ___ \ ///|\\\ _\ Cornet 374-4547 _________________ _______ | _________
DYOUNG@USC-ISID.ARPA (C. David Young) (11/18/85)
Terry, You say that you have seen some of the 80 column simulations and that they look pretty awful. I agree. But it is not so much due to the lack of resolution available in graphics 8 as to the poor character sets these authors have created. I have studied calligraphy and I think that as a result the character set of OMNIVIEW is quite nice. And I know thousands of customers that would agree. Of course there are certain letters like 'm' and 'w' which you can do nothing about. But then again, with a good monitor there is no doubt what these characters are when you see them on the screen. And I strongly disagree that a good monitor does not make any difference. It makes all the difference in the world, especially when the difference between 'm' and 'w' is only one pixel! Besides all of this, I doubt very seriously that you will ever again see any other 80 column hardware for the 8 bitters. Given the price of the machines it is just not cost effective. And OMNIVIEW gives you so much more than 80 columns! I just finished souping up the ramdisk handlers in OMNIVIEW XL/XE to treat the extra RAM in our 256K upgrade for the 800XL as a double sided single density drive. What a joy to have such a big ramdisk! David Young -------