[net.micro.amiga] Resolution and Flicker - Rumors/Solutions

guest@ccivax.UUCP (What's in a name ?) (10/22/85)

Talking to the local Amiga dealer, he stated that given the right monitor
to drive it, the Amiga could be programmed to run in very high resolution.
The numbers quoted were 1280x1024 interlaced.  Can anybody confirm this?

Could the Amiga change from the NTSC "Crawling Interlace" that causes the
high-res flicker, to a 70HZ and a 262.5 (rather than 262.525) scan rate?
This appears to be the way the ATARI gets it's high res (It doesn't flicker,
but it's monochrome)?  The natural persistance of the Phosphor seems to hide
flicker unless you look very very close (1" with a magnifying glass).

cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) (10/29/85)

> Talking to the local Amiga dealer, he stated that given the right monitor
> to drive it, the Amiga could be programmed to run in very high resolution.
> The numbers quoted were 1280x1024 interlaced.  Can anybody confirm this?
> 
> Could the Amiga change from the NTSC "Crawling Interlace" that causes the
> high-res flicker, to a 70HZ and a 262.5 (rather than 262.525) scan rate?
> This appears to be the way the ATARI gets it's high res (It doesn't flicker,
> but it's monochrome)?  The natural persistance of the Phosphor seems to hide
> flicker unless you look very very close (1" with a magnifying glass).

Assuming you could bypass the NTSC junk, there are two things that affect the
need to use interlace. 1] The monitor must support "n" lines where "n" for the
amiga would probably be 600 (400 displayed, 100 on top and bottom) and 2]
bus bandwidth/scan rate. Meaning that to display all of those pixels on the
screen in one frame the hardware has to be able to shove them out the interface
at ~8 Mbytes /second (assuming 4 bit pixels in a 600 X 400 frame) 

The question is for anyone (especially the amiga folks) if the custom chips
are capable of this sort of rate. And if so should I be saving my pennies for
a very expensive RGB Hires monitor? 

--Chuck
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